Prenatal socialization – Biological environment – Individual chronicle
An extension of Jean Piaget’s stage concept to include the stages
Introduction
The consideration of emotions by the “[…] European […; founding fathers] of sociology, […] Georg Simmel, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim […]” (Flam 2002: 9) quickly forgot their discipline in a vow of fidelity to rationality and hushed it up until the mid-1980s in order to do credit to their common emulation of economics. This present work will go one step further and also include the biology of the human being (cf. Simmons 1991: 11), which is ignored by most sociologists, in the analysis in order to take account of a holistic world view, which today in the course of “[…] [m]onetarist neoliberalism […]” (Biebricher 2012: 70-86) with great attention to detail (see also Hüther/Krens 2011: 32). Because a person who is no longer able to see the big picture can no longer form their own opinion and is therefore primarily susceptible to controlled political-economic incentives. The importance of a holistic approach, especially in the context of emotions, becomes particularly clear in the following quote:
“Therefore, there is no single plan for the organization of a class of emotions, and no single class of emotions, and no single component is primary to the genesis and production of the emotion.” (Holodynski 2006: 29)
It should actually be completely normal to deal with the biological processes of emotional impulses, as these are an essential part of feeling emotions, but as is so often the case, sociology is of the opinion that our biology is not connected to our social interaction. This is why we speak of (reproductive) instincts, the seemingly fundamentally evil nature of man (as Hobbes in Leviathan – or T.H. Huxley – one of the central foundations of rational choice theories in economics, the traditional birthplace of monetarist neoliberalism). This ignorance of holistic contexts is evident in the way we treat ourselves, especially our unborn and newborn children, and casts a rather barbaric and medieval image of us in terms of our social development. Our technology has perhaps come a long way – even though we still use fire as our primary source of energy, be it in car engines, coal-fired power plants or airplanes. As a human species, however, we are not much more advanced than we were at the time of the Inquisition:
“Just a few decades ago, newborn babies were operated on without anesthesia because it was believed that their sensitivity to pain had not yet developed. Newborns were separated from their mothers after birth so that the mothers could recover in peace. It was assumed that the newborns were not yet experiencing any psychological suffering.” (Hüther/Krens: 2011: 8)
Such shock experiences are deeply rooted in our biology, shape our later actions and our interactions with others and can have a lasting effect on our development – or help us if they are positive. Socialization begins in the womb at the moment of conception:
“‘If this environment is very frightening, then the synapses (nerve connections) for fear, anxiety and stress are more likely to be formed – and less those for happiness and contentment. However, if the mother has a good relationship with the pregnancy, it is the other way around: then the child also feels wanted,’ believes Janus. Some researchers therefore even speak of a person’s prenatal ‘programming’, which has a lifelong effect, such as Professor Nathanielsz from Cornell University in the state of New York (USA): ‘You can have the most beautiful genome (set of genes) in the world – if the influences in the womb are negative, the end product can be pretty bad. Even in the womb, as scientists observe in ultrasound scans, the babies apparently react visibly to negative feelings of the pregnant woman: Some become restless, their movements are erratic. Others make themselves small and pull their arms and legs close to their bodies.” (Möller 2012)
How far this prenatal development of humans goes and how much we limit ourselves in our development for reasons of adaptation alone will be explored in the following chapter, which consolidates the basis of the assumptions made here and substantiates them with empirical results. Among the “[…] American [Klassikern der] sociology […]” (Flam 2002: 9), “[…] Charles Horton Cooley […], Pitrim A. Sorokin […] and Talcott Parsons’ Emotions […]” (ibid.) emerged as significant for sociology and in English-speaking countries, despite the particular proximity to monetarist neoliberalism, this topic began to be given greater attention again:
“Although the sociology of emotions is very strongly represented in the USA and England, it has only found a few supporters in Germany. Its beginnings date back to the mid-1970s. In 1975, groundbreaking texts were published by Arlie Hochschild and Randall Collins, which placed emotions at the center of analysis. The interdisciplinary International Society for Research was founded in 1984. The establishment of a section for the sociology of emotions at the American Sociological Association followed in 1986.” (Flam 2002: 9)
It is therefore not surprising that our approach to emotions and our unborn and newborn children is still very ambivalent in terms of quality and prudence. Our scientific understanding of emotions alone, especially in sociology, is so ambivalent that it may take years before these now trivial connections between competing disciplines (primarily in questions of funding distribution) are accepted – and not just by the broad mass of science and not just by smiling outsiders who are prepared to try something new. This ambivalence of our view of emotions in sociology is reflected very well in the anthology by Schützeichel (2006) – in it: Bolle; Döring; Esser; Flam; Kessel; Meer; Neckel; Nullmeier; Pettenkofer; Rössel; Schnabel; Vester; Winkel. Apart from the disagreement in the approaches (which has its raison d’être depending on the point of view), I have to say that the greatest deficit in this work is a more or less complete ignorance of the biological connections. Flam (2002) hardly takes this aspect into account either, even though she does not want to claim any authority over definitions, but gives the sociologist an introduction to the traditional anchoring of emotions in sociology. What is suddenly gaining in importance today as an important component of sociology has already been presented/introduced in the highly respected classics listed above and has been ignored by almost all of their students to this day. In my opinion, the decisive cornerstone for understanding emotions should be an introduction and fundamental consideration of the general biological processes in the human organism. This is a factor of prenatal socialization that very few sociologists take into account and is undesirable in institutes without respect for these perspectives. Epigenetics has only recently provided impressive evidence for the inheritance of learned behavior from parents to children (see below). The aim of my work is to provide a brief and concise introduction to the complexity of this topic and to create a symbiosis between biology, (para)psychology and sociology. This is intended to create space for a more holistic approach, which is receiving less and less attention in today’s society (depending on the prevailing cultural attitudes), but above all in the increasingly specialized sciences:
“[…] the foundations for all later human performance [werden] are already laid during early embryonic development […]” (Hüther/Krens 2011: 61)
I will use aspects of Jean Piaget’s stage concept as a bridge between the facets of biology and sociology, as Piaget describes processes there that could simply be described as stages of socialization and are just as valid for biological processes. Manfred Spitzer (2006) provides a good transition for this and AlkeDH (2000a: 98) already provides concise points of intersection with a reference to “engrams”, abstracted from pure socialization, extended to all developmental aspects of the child in the process of its identity formation.
I will begin this work with the biological foundations of prenatal socialization. This will be about pregnancy and how people develop in the first days, months and years after birth:
“All the abilities and skills that a newborn brings into the world have already been learned, acquired and practiced in one way or another in the womb.” (Hüther/Krens 2011: 22f)
I will then illustrate this primarily emotional development of the child through aspects of Piaget’s stage concept, paying particular attention to Piaget’s assimilation and accommodation structures, rather than to the concept itself down to the smallest detail, which should merely serve as a template for its expansion.
This breakdown is intended to give an impression of the primary influence that the first nine months have on the child in the womb – but also aspects of epigenetics (see below) and reincarnation – and how this period shapes and conditions its emotions for later life, whether it becomes a self-confident, strong person or an anxious, withdrawn person who puts up with everything or not. These first moments have a particular influence on whether we as newborns will later develop a tendency towards socially disturbed or stable behavior. This prenatal socialization with its biological contexts is of particular importance for understanding emotions and how we deal with them in everyday life and in science, regardless of the discipline:
“Through the information arriving via [the; …] sensory organs [des Ungeborenen] it has already learned about aspects of the world that are important for its survival in the womb.” (Hüther/Krens 2011: 89)
At the same time, the work can be understood as a starting point for understanding our prosocial nature, which is still massively questioned by rational choice theorists and economists today and teaches young students this false self-image of human beings. This may serve neoliberal systems of mass consumption of mostly useless products, or doctrinaire outdated ideologies that want to maintain their power, but not human development or even our society as a whole.
Biological foundations of prenatal socialization
How do these differentiated sociobiological, social-psychological, psychobiological and (para-)psychological connections, which I regard as the essential basis of my work, take shape? The connection between human biology and human psychology is not new and is widely considered in the mental analysis of human beings. To illustrate this, I would like to introduce this section with a short quote from Holodynski (2006: 29):
“[…] Emotional states, which refer to the phenomenal aspects of an emotional state, are composed of multiple component processes. These include appraisals as motive-relevant interpretations, affect-triggering systems such as the central and autonomic nervous system and bodily reactions that generate the emotional tone, and the overt action system, which is composed of involuntary mimic and vocal reactions as well as voluntary actions. […] Emotional experiences develop through reciprocal regulation of the component systems over time and in specific social contexts. […] Component systems are context-sensitive, i.e. they also adapt to continuous changes in the social context.” (after Mascolo/Harkins/Harakal 2000 in Holodynski 2006: 29)
I will now expand this social context, the socialization of the actor, with the help of Hüther/Krens (2011) to include a phase of biological socialization. It is known that our emotional state, our state of mind, is linked to changing bioelectrical impulses (EEG (Zimbardo et al. 1983: 479)) in the body. Our skin resistance changes and provides information about whether we feel relaxed or tense and barely perceptible muscle contractions express our states – transmitted by our limbic (cf. Rohen 1985: 188ff) and autonomic nervous system (cf. Mörike/Mergenthaler 1970: 321; Schulz 2003: 9ff) combined with various hormone releases (cf. Senger/Huber 1989; Crapo 1987) in the human organism (cf. AlkeDH 2002; AlkeTOR 2016a). My assumption in this thesis is that initial socialization occurs through our experiences in the womb, at the stage (α) from the first cell division to the baby’s maturity at birth. And as this chapter will show, there are even conclusions that can include experiences from previous lives and are summarized as stage (Ω), if you believe the research projects of the University of Virginia and projects of the CIA at the Stanford Research Institute that were released to the public a few years ago. I am not specifically concerned with the mediation of certain movements, acoustic signals, cultural conventions or other specific social learning processes (although these already play a central role through stimuli experienced by the unborn in the womb). I am primarily concerned with the basic emotional impulses that express our feelings in relation to positive and negative emotions such as fear or love and many gradations between these levels, whether these originate from stage α or Ω (more on this in chapter: Emotions and Piaget’s stage concept).
Since emotions such as love, joy, well-being or ecstasy can evoke completely different reactions depending on the subject and are dependent on certain situations or expectations of the subject, I do not want to get involved in conceptual finesses of explicit definitions of these when not even the process of emotion formation or the conditioning of these has been formulated in any form or brought into a holistic context. These kinds of nuances without a real examination of human biology (and its connections to psychology) only serve the self-preservation of (social) theorists who are looking for a basis to secure their position in the chair. They are not relevant for the following explanations and I will limit myself in this work to the formulation of positive and negative emotions, especially as they can always turn out somewhat differently depending on the culture and milieu, even though the inner biological processes remain more or less identical and this already from conception (the moment of conception):
“Psychotherapist Dr. Ludwig Janus is absolutely certain of this. ‘When we are so closely together with another person, as is the case before birth, we perceive their affectivity (= feelings) on many channels,’ he emphasizes in an interview*. Janus even believes: ‘The prenatal imprints are the deepest’. […] It is certain that, among other things, certain maternal hormones act as messenger substances. They make the mother’s tension or relaxation, sadness, anger or joy tangible for the baby, because the placenta passes these material ‘messengers’ on to the child.” (Möller 2012)
I will refer to this phase of human development, its socialization in the womb, as the biological environment (stage α), which limits the child’s social environment primarily to that of the mother and also the father (especially due to the findings of epigenetics (see below)), i.e. the mother’s immediate social partners – primarily of an intimate but also regular and close nature. Why am I already extending the social environment within this biological environment to a primarily social context? According to the recent findings of epigenetics, the earlier “[…] acquired […]” (Beckers in Schultes 2016) behavior of both parents tends to influence the development of their child in the future, according to Prof. Johannes Beckers and Prof. Martin Hrabe de Angelis (both from Helmholtz Zentrum München). Both biological and social factors play a major role in the development of the human being:
“Although we cannot consciously remember prenatal experiences, they seem to be deeply rooted in our bodies and souls.” (Hüther/Krens 2011: 16)
“The quality of the relationship that the parents have with each other is just as important for the unborn child’s living environment” (Hüther/Krens 2011: 27)
I will include more detailed explanations through Hüther/Krens, but at this point I would like to include a somewhat longer section from one of my older works, which gives an impression of the capabilities of our newborns and how our socialization limits our natural innate ability to perceive and differentiate to a considerable extent (AlkeTOR 2016b: Chapter: The perception of our newborns):
Very interesting work on the perceptual abilities of young children, well before puberty or the phase of intelligence development in children according to Piaget (1986), is summarized very well by Sanders (2016). In a study, Pascalis/de Haan/Nelson (2002 in Sanders 2016) found that children up to the age of six months “can easily perceive subtle differences in the faces of monkeys [während Kinder ab einem Alter von neun Monaten und Erwachsene] are no longer able to do so”1 (Sanders 2016). Their ability to perceive light frequencies [see also Hüther/Krens (2011: 85) on light sensitivity in unborn children] is also pronounced in three to four-month-old children in areas that we no longer perceive as we grow older (ibid.)2:
‘With experience, children probably learn that these subtle differences are not so important. ‘As a result, children lose this remarkable ability,’ [wie] Yang [et al. 2015] says.3 (Sanders 2016)
In the same way, children aged “[…] 6 to 7 months […]” (Sanders 2016) are able to perceive the finest differences in verbal (Werker et al. 1981 in Sanders 2016) and non-verbal (Palmer et al. 2012 in Sanders 2016) language [cf. also Hüther/Krens (2011: 88) already in “unborn children”4. An ability that they lose again at around one year of age, as “[…] the child language expert Janet Werker from the University of British Columbia and colleagues found […]” (ibid.)5. The sense of touch (Ali/Spence/Bremner 2015 in Sanders 2015, 2016) is also much more precise in 4-month-old children than a further two months later (Sanders 20166). Sanders (20167) explains this decrease in babies’ perceptual capacity by reducing perception to what is necessary for the baby to interact with its environment. Schmidt/Sommerville (20118) focus more on the social context and were able to identify the ability to treat others with consideration in children as young as 15 months, which means that they already have moral and prosocial behavior in these few years of life [- so much for the evil nature of humans (see above; see also Hüther/Krens 2011: 35, 47f, 55, 58)].
In view of these findings, it can be assumed that our offspring generally have a very high level of comprehension, both socially and perceptually [und womöglich sogar in Bereichen außerhalb unserer allgemein anerkannten Sinne (s.u.)]. And it is probably up to us as parents whether we encourage these abilities in our children or not. And since children with a higher capacity for perception and differentiation tend to act more altruistically than children with more limited abilities, we should probably encourage our children’s[…; abilities]. The state with its standardized systems seems to me to be the wrong point of contact here, even if it could create better framework conditions for such support, which does not seem to be its intention or is now beyond its reach, as socio-political developments show:
‘Of course, every bureaucracy must also protect itself from endeavors that it cannot see through, but which certainly sharpen the critical thinking skills of genuine seekers. Which politician wants to be scrutinized by self-confident people? (AlkeDH 2004a: 25)
These results contradict the assumption by Hüther/Krens (2011: 63-65) that humans are particularly slow learners. On the contrary, we can learn extremely quickly and at the same time absorb very complex contexts (cf. Spitzer9 2006 – the results also contradict Spitzer in the sense that he assumes more rudimentary abilities in children than in adults), while as newborns we first reduce ourselves to a socially acceptable (intelligence) level – whether this is to ensure stable interpersonal communication or simply out of convenience, as our current level of socially acceptable perception and socialization is so low. Low in the sense of reduced perceptual abilities, which are often only evident in autistic people, but in many cases also among normal people.
Already “[…] at the age of eight weeks, the fetus reacts when it is touched on the lips […]” (Hüther/Krens 2011: 80; cf. also Möller 2012) and gains a wide range of experiences with itself and its environment through touch in the womb (cf. ibid.: 81):
“Fetuses at 19 weeks exposed to a painful procedure […] release stress hormones in response. It is also reported that some fetuses cry audibly during an abortion between the 21st and 23rd week of pregnancy. Due to the unclear situation, some English scientists are calling for anesthesia for the fetus as a precautionary measure for abortions from the 17th week of pregnancy. It is also interesting in this context that pain-inhibiting systems only become effective towards the end of pregnancy, so that it must even be assumed that from the end of the second trimester, fetuses are more likely to perceive pain than newborns.” (Hüther/Krens 2011: 83)
In my opinion, such harmful behaviour towards the unborn and children promotes the development of anti-social behaviour and the malice of nature generally assumed by Hobbes/Huxley is probably more a product of their negative life experiences and a barbaric/medieval socialization! The starting point for the socialization of emotions by the biological environment is probably first and foremost the emotions of the mother. If, for example, she feels a sense of joy (eF), a bioelectric impulse eF is triggered, which in turn triggers the release of hormones (HF). The child even learns to taste in the womb:
“Depending on the mother’s diet, the amniotic fluid takes on a slightly different flavor.” (Hüther/Krens 2011: 83) – “It is known that the eating habits of mothers influence the taste preferences of their newborn children. However, fetuses especially love “sweet things”: the sweeter the amniotic fluid, the more they drink. […] The child recognizes its mother later after birth by the smell of the mother’s milk.” (ibid.: 84) – “Familiar flavors or scents are associated with the mother or the maternal environment.” (ibid.: 85) – “In any case, an auditory stimulus between the 20th and 24th week of pregnancy triggers a motor response in the fetus.” (ibid.: 86)
“If we want to bring our world back to a harmonious state, we need a different attitude, especially among scientists and their funders. Let’s take an example. Chemists produce E 605/DDT to destroy unwanted insects. As the poison is immediately washed away with the groundwater, it is ‘gone’ and apparently everything is okay. Now, 30 years after the mass use of this environmental poison in Europe, many Eskimo children are dying from DDT and many are born deformed because the poison has migrated from our forests and through our rivers into the plankton of the oceans. The plankton did not die but reached the seal blubber via the fish food chain and finally into the breast milk of the Eskimo women.” Man is the end of the food chain, as is the polar bear. There, too, many bear cubs are already born dead!” (AlkeDH 2000a: 73)
Since humans are known to have an electromagnetic field and are influenced by external electromagnetic fields, the child experiences this interaction between bioelectric (e) impulses and certain hormones (H) in its biological environment (stage α), since neither the electrical impulses (e) remain isolated from the child nor are the mother’s hormones (H) completely isolated from the embryo by the placenta (cf. Hüther/Krens 2011: 56). Certainly, in early phases of embryonic development, the unborn child’s nervous system (which consists of the outer cell layer of the “[…] gastrula [, … the; …] ecdoderm […]” (Hüther/Krens 2011: 58)) is hardly comparable to that of a mature human being, but in the course of the 10-month pregnancy, increasingly similar areas are formed in relation to the mother – glands that secrete explicit hormones and nerve pathways that transmit the bioelectric impulses in increasingly differentiated pathways in the child’s own body (cf. Hüther 2011:58f, 72, 75, 78):
“The formation of embryonic structures is linked to the assumption of specific functions at every stage of prenatal development. Structural and functional friction processes can therefore never be separated from each other. […] The inseparable connection between structure and function is also shown by the fact that the developing nerve tracts do not “know” from the outset where they will grow and how [sie] must connect. The outgrowing processes can only be connected to each other in a certain way and formed into functional networks if they are also used in a certain way, i.e. utilized. […] The respective functions are already practiced during the formation of the body.” (Hüther/Krens 2011: 60)
If the actor is born “mature” for the biological environment (and thus enters stage 1 according to Piaget (see below)), it can be assumed that it is the mother’s emotional reactions in particular that the child can recognize and interpret with more or less precise results (cf. Hüther 2011), since it expresses its own feelings in a rudimentary form in a similar way or these feelings are the only ones it has learned to know so far (without the experiences accumulated over a lifetime in the natural environment).10 socialized actor, which have led and contributed to differentiations of expression and perception in various ways, especially with regard to symbols, audiovisual signals, smells and physical sensations, which have not yet reached this far-reaching diversity in the womb – so may every human being be wished to have such extensive and varied (positive) experiences). The child therefore enters the natural and therefore also the social environment (more on this in the following chapter) with a very differentiated and uninhibited template of emotional reaction patterns and must react independently to its environment without bioelectrical and hormonal input from the mother. If, in addition to established facts such as bioelectrical impulses, hormones, auditory and visual signals as well as smells, tastes and contact in the womb, phenomena such as telepathy (Jung 1990, AlkeDH 2002c) and astral travel (Dunne/Bisaha 1979; Puthoff 1996; AlkeDH 2002a/b/c, 2004, 2005), which were/are researched by C.G. Jung (1990) and, for example, the CIA (Puthoff 1996), the idea cannot be dismissed that even a rudimentary, primarily emotionally interpreted knowledge in the form of sensations in connection with hormones, auditory, visual and kinetic signals was conveyed to the child – which the child could hardly interpret rationally or in a specifically cognitive-scholastic sense, whereby even these limitations have been confirmed by studies on reincarnation experiences.11 (Alke DH 2002c: 171ff, 2004; Tucker12 2015) should be viewed with caution (stage Ω (see below)):
“After the first series of tests, the spatial distance between experimenter and V.P. was extended up to 350 kilometers in one case. The average result of numerous trials amounted to 10.1 hits on 25 cards. In another series of experiments, when the experimenter and V.P. were in the same room, there were 11.4 hits per 25; when the V.P. was in the next room, 9.7 per 25; when she was two rooms away, 12.0 per 25. Rhine mentions experiments by Usher and Burt that extended over 1344 kilometers with positive results. […; Rhine: The Reach of the Mind, 1948, p. 49]. Supported by synchronized clocks, experiments were also carried out between Durham in North Carolina and Zagreb in Yugoslavia (about 5600 kilometers) with equally positive results.[…; Rhine/Humphrey: A Transoceanic ESP Experiment, 1942, p. 52] […] The probability of Reine’s results with the time experiment is 1:400,000, which means a considerable probability for the existence of a factor independent of time. The result of the time experiments points to a psychological relativity of time, in that it concerns perceptions of events that have not yet occurred. In such cases, the time factor seems to be eliminated by a psychic function, or rather by a psychic state that is also capable of eliminating the space factor. […] One must therefore from the outset dispense with all energetic explanations, which means that events of this kind cannot be considered from the point of view of causality, because causality presupposes the existence of space and time, in that all observation is ultimately based on moving bodies.” (Jung 1990: 21f)
“Regardless of one’s own viewpoints, even a dispassionate observer must recognize the following facts. Despite ambiguities inherent in the nature of field research in these programs, the results presented clearly demonstrate that a human ability to view events remotely in space and time, albeit with fluctuating results and without us fully understanding these cognitive processes. In my years as a research director on these programs, I have come to believe that this fact must be taken into account in any attempt to describe reality in order to ensure an unbiased picture of the structure of reality.” (Puthoff 1996: 76)13
“It is the author’s belief that the attitudinal environment and the initial relationship that exists between the giftee [percipient] and the observer [agent] are critical factors in the success of remote viewing [Astralreise / Der Geist verlässt den Körper]. In all experiments, we created an atmosphere of comfort, playfulness and relaxation in which psi phenomena are considered real and natural. […] Although our current knowledge does not provide us with an adequate explanation to explain the phenomenon, the fact that this is a replication of an experiment on remote viewing, which as an experimental design provides further evidence that channels of perception and communication lie beyond our senses than those defined today, a well-founded point of reference for further research in this area.” (Dunne/Bisaha 1979: 29)14 .
“From many regressions we were able to recognize the following process: Only when father and mother sacrifice part of the life energy from their own aura can viable egg and sperm cells be created [transition from Ω to α]. Shortly before conception, the spirit that wants to incarnate is already in the room and hovers over the couple [Stadium Ω], who are busy with themselves and with sex. The parents are of course also present. Their psychic and mental energy can be felt very precisely by the spirit. The emotional moods of the parents during conception [Stadium α] have a strong influence on the mood of the future human being. Is it great love? Is it just sex under the influence of alcohol or rape? Does the woman not want a child at all? Does the man not want a child and abandons the woman? The feelings of the parents at conception shape the child’s attitude to life.” (AlkeDH 2002c: 625f) – “The problem of conscious pregnancy (conception) is particularly serious today. Over the past centuries, women have been robbed of their awareness of their own bodies and their intuitive power. The ideology of the church that intercourse is only permitted for procreation seems to imply that it must lead to this. Of course this is not true. Women are able to regulate it! A conscious woman does not need external controls and aids. She is consciously fertile or infertile. And she naturally senses whether fertilization has taken place. If an incarnation has taken place, she senses the foreign spirit, this guest within her. She can feel whether it will be a boy or a girl.” (Alke DH 2002c: 630)
It should be borne in mind that every newborn must first learn to see for itself, as we generally do as born and adult humans. What is normal for the “adult” is associated with an additional flood of foreign stimuli for the newborn (stage 1 according to Piaget (see below), while at the same time a large number of stimuli are eliminated and become significantly less differentiated in terms of light frequency patterns (see above). However, representative areas are formed in the nervous system during procreation (cf. Hüther 2011: 71ff; Spitzer 2006). Manfred Spitzer (2006) also speaks here of “maps”, which make it possible to perceive the environment through visual stimuli, not to mention the correct interpretation of objects and events in this natural environment. However, a child learns the vital basics of perception, whether seeing, smelling, hearing or tasting, in the womb:
“Every brain is nothing other than the protocol of its use.” (Spritzer 2006) – “[…] [Da das Gehirn des Kindes] was already developed. And we know that today, is the case, in the womb. […]” (ibid.: 00:12:52)
This raises the question, assuming one accepts the phenomenon of telepathy (/mind transference or astral travel/remote viewing), as to when a child reaches consciousness within the biological environment, which is an extensive subject of dispute in stem cell research regardless of telepathy or other phenomena, up to what stage of development an egg cell may develop, i.e. until its abortion is considered murder or experiments with it are considered a violation of human rights. Closely linked to this is the question of the maturity of the brain15which provides the neural pathways necessary for cognition and, according to the understanding of the development of emotions outlined here, is also an elementary component of these emotions. It is in the interests of the pharmaceutical industry to regard the unborn child as an incomplete human being, as it is only from this perspective that it does not receive legal protection under our Basic Law:
“What we know today shows that a baby is already a being in the womb that is dependent on the mother’s (and father’s) inner affection and love. The highlight of this development is that four weeks before birth, the baby already recognizes its mother’s voice without a doubt. When she speaks, his pulse calms down. Other voices or noises do not have the same effect, observed psychiatrist Bill Eifer. Dr. Janus deduces from such research results: ‘The child has a right to a relationship even before birth. It has a right to be seen as its own person and to be contacted already. Furthermore, all medical examinations or interventions during pregnancy and at birth should be scrutinized for their psychological consequences.” (Möller 2012)
“If there were an interest in keeping humanity as healthy as possible, then it would be appropriate to provide loving care for young women in particular during their first pregnancy, including their growing years. The aim should be to guide the young mother so that she feels strong and healthy.” (AlkeDH 2002c: 24) – “The seeds for later illnesses are already sown in the embryonic phase and the first years of childhood. If you have chronic illnesses, you should examine the period from pregnancy (when you were still in your mother’s womb [Stadium α]) up to the age of 3 as part of a regression.” (Alke DH 2002c: 28) – “The imprinting of engrams already begins in the womb with the embryo. It experiences everything that the mother experiences and suffers. It shares with the mother all feelings, nutrition, possible fears, accidents, sex with the father, the father’s moods, what the parents talk about, what the mother hears etc. It is therefore possible that when explaining the cause of a difficult engram in regression we have to go back to before birth in the womb. And in very problematic cases, where no solution emerges, where there is no improvement despite clarification of the facts in this life, we will probably have to look for the true cause in previous lives [Stadium Ω]. However, it would be completely wrong to blame previous lives for every persistent problem. Most everyday problems stem from the present life.” (Alke DH 2002c: 98)
These engrams, these emotional reaction patterns, can be understood in a similar way to Manfred Spitzer’s (2006) cognitive representation areas, which trigger reaction A when event A occurs, which runs through nerve pathway A and thus releases hormone A, with all the associated muscle contractions and, after entering the natural environment (stage 1 according to Piaget (see below)), also increased auditory stimulus reactions. The prerequisite for this is that certain nerve pathways in the body are used. Spitzer says that it is necessary to repeat an activity over and over again until the body has really mastered it, regardless of whether it is a man or a woman (which he describes by the fact that the highest level of accuracy in sport or other activities occurs around the age of 45 (Spitzer, 2008)). Spitzer 2006) and that when limbs are lost, even without the limb, the body still feels its presence (Spitzer 2006) and the associated pain – a state of shock stored by human biology, which when released can cause tremors throughout the body, which in autogenic training (Schulz 2003) or therapy work can be described as a nervous storm (Alke DH 2002c) – closely associated with the autonomic nervous system).
What is certain is that a newborn (stage 1 according to Piaget (see below)) uses simple actions such as crying to draw attention to its basic needs, for example hunger, and to emphasize unpleasant feelings such as cold and wetness. According to the classic model of Jean Piaget (1986), an actor only develops into a differentiated perceiving and differentiated reacting actor over the course of years, whereby the duration of this development process and the ability to differentiate can vary greatly depending on the actor (however, certain tendency areas have crystallized in the form of age phases) apart from the variety of stimuli from the environment. There is no one “golden rule” of explicit education or development, except to support the child in its development, which can include highly diverse and completely individual measures, but should be in agreement with the child and not just reflect the fantasies of the parents or society.
As the above results show, as newborns we are anything but undifferentiated beings – especially not as unborns – which Piaget’s model could hardly take into account due to its age and the state of science at the time. Although many mothers and shamans were already aware of this and parts of our culture that were not censored by the Catholic Church are quite aware of it, science itself has only recently recognized these results, and only in part, with sometimes strong resistance.
It is important to find a balance between stimuli from the environment and rest phases for the internal processing of these environmental stimuli, similar to Piaget’s definition of intelligence (see below), which in turn can vary depending on the subject. A balance that is also of the utmost importance for the subject’s internal processes, as we have already seen and will see below.
According to this principle, the bioelectrical and biochemical pre-programming and possible mental mediation in the womb (stage α) – even experiences from previous incarnations – the unborn child would, in the sense of G.H. Mead’s stage “one”, primarily copy (play) the behavior of its mother and create a rudimentary template of reaction patterns. This template of reaction patterns probably serves first and foremost to satisfy the basic needs of the (un)born, a basic construction kit for the development of the habitus in order to become compatible with society in questions of communication and behavior. This template is formed with the help of flexible assimilation and accommodation schemes in the sense of Piaget (1986), which enable the formation of one’s own individuality, with completely individual experiences and a deviation from socialization by the biological and later also the social environment (cf. Alke TOR 2016b).
As the bond between the mother and the newborn in particular is closer than with all subsequent social relationships, at least as far as this area of socialization is concerned, socialization in the biological environment (stage α) has a lasting influence on the child’s development. Furthermore, it cannot be denied that children, purely statistically, often follow in the footsteps of their parents – a realization that has existed for thousands of years, even before statistics, and has been given a whole new dimension by epigenetics (see above).
It can be assumed that a human cloned completely in an artificial environment, without the variety of biochemical/electrical impulses of the natural biological environment (stage α) and the associated emotions, would have no reference points for stimuli and reactions from the social environment and would appear rather apathetic. Such an organism would probably not be able to properly control bioelectrical impulses or at least establish a direct link to explicit hormonal releases, apart from certain physical reactions such as muscle contraction and skin resistance, although epigenetics could even clarify questions here.
This should have explained the essential (socio-)biological connections with the child’s emotional development and given expression to the importance of emotions and their interplay with biology. It is indisputable that we as human beings already receive essential imprints from our parents and our environment in the womb (stage α) and, if we want to take this into account, we also bring engrams from previous lives (stage Ω) in the form of emotions and subtle behaviors.
In order to provide some clarity to this variety of influencing factors, I will give a schematic overview in the following chapter and then provide Piaget’s assimilation and accommodation for a better description of the formation of engrams and their emotions. This will be followed by a supplement and interpretative modification of part of Piaget’s concept of stages in order to make room for these new findings and to provide a better categorization of our stages of socialization.
(Prenatal) socialization, biological environment & individual chronicle
The following description is intended to be in the sense of Goffman’s interaction membrane (1961; AlkeTOR 2016d: The “interaction membrane” – Goffman’s sword of Damocles) as universally as possible. However, if certain components have not been taken into account, this should not exclude their connectivity to this model from the outset.
In the previous chapter, I illustrated the importance of taking the biological environment into account in prenatal human development. The primarily empirical results show clear connections between our prenatal experiences and give an impression of the impressive abilities that we as humans already have in the womb and only unlearn after birth. Since I have now dealt with a whole series of terms that have not been introduced in detail, I want to give this comprehensive introduction a schematic structure in order to divide these phases into logically connected areas, if possible without cutting back on the flexibility and diversity of their possible combinations and weightings and their significance in our socialization. I will not be able to take account here of ambivalences in the quality and homogeneity of social relationships between the actors listed, which must be decided/evaluated on a case-by-case basis. This schematic representation merely serves as an ideal-typical outline of possible frameworks.
As the figure “Human socialization landscape” (see below) shows, humans are in the socialization process (stage α) within the biological environment from the beginning of their conception. In this phase, he has the closest contact with his mother and is stimulated in particular by bioelectrical impulses and hormones. If genetic inheritance is also taken into account (cf. epigenetics (see above)), the genes of the mother and father also play a special role, which is why the father is also partly attributed to the biological environment. The father, as the second very intensive caregiver, is regarded as a separate environment, as the paternal environment, since without him the conception of the child is not possible at all (we leave out the possibilities of cloning from stem cells here and limit ourselves to the natural reproductive process – A-sexual reproduction plays a special role here and excludes the paternal environment in this sense). Together with the child’s intimate partner(s) and sibling(s) in its current incarnation (stages α to 6 (see below)), they form the child’s intimate environment, which includes only the child’s closest and most intimate social contacts. Intimate in this sense does not necessarily mean sex, but rather a deep mutual openness towards the other person. In connection with the social environment, the intimate environment provides a whole range of socialization frameworks, which I have structured as follows:
1. engrams
2. emotions
3. thoughts
4. culture(s)
5. conventions
6. information
I have chosen this order because not every recollection or routine (engram) from a previous life (stage Ω) has to be of an emotional nature. Engrams simply represent solidified patterns of behavior that can positively influence our actions in situations intended for them (synonymously, one can speak of habitus here). In situations where it is necessary to deviate, engrams (and thus the habitus) can become a shackle and disrupt the quality of our actions and interactions. Emotions form a somewhat more specialized field than the umbrella term engrams, although they are almost identical to them in terms of process and effect, with the only difference that they do not necessarily have to be perceived as positive or negative. An example: a martial artist repeats his fighting exercises over and over again and thus becomes a very efficient and, above all, lightning-fast fighter. He does this instinctively in order to be able to defend himself as quickly as possible in necessary situations. He does this out of interest in the sport, out of passion, not out of any fear or desire for revenge. On the other hand, we see a martial artist who has often been beaten up in his life, who was an outsider, was possibly mistreated by his parents and wants to show the world – he is receptive to the biblical texts of revenge. He reaches an acceptable level, but his fighting skills never reach the level of the fighter acting out of interest. While the one acting out of fear and revenge can easily be upset by provocations (if he ever gets to rest), the one acting out of passion perfects his physical skills for the sake of precision, not because of the abuse he has experienced in the past. The focus here is not on the actual martial art, but rather on the motivation for learning it. One person acts out of interest, it gives him balance and he can identify with it. The other has existential fears deep in his subconscious, wants revenge for the bad treatment in his childhood and simply wants revenge for what was done to him. Emotions play a role in both cases, but the one who trains out of passion primarily forms helpful engrams, he conditions his body with an ideology (in order to create a bridge to the biological environment through the social environment), while the other actually only acts emotionally in order to hide his fears behind aggression and hatred.
The possibility, or rather the ability, for self-reflection and the associated rationality enables the actor to regain a reasonably clear head more quickly in such extreme situations or even to dampen the extent of an emotional overreaction so as not to completely lose sight of the situation. This is not to imply that emotions are something negative, on the contrary. However, the awareness of one’s own emotions and the experience gained with them has a significant impact on the action potential of each actor and can both inhibit and encourage them in their actions.
The starting point of an actor’s emotional state is, it is assumed here, a basic, relatively homogeneous emotional state that fluctuates slightly between positive and negative emotions (one could imagine it as a sine curve16 curve), while particular highs and lows lead to particularly strong emotional reactions, which can manifest themselves in strong negative or positive emotions and result in a loss of existing objectivity for the duration of their dominant representation. If one also considers the findings of prenatal research (see Möller 2012 and further literature – in particular Hüther 2011), it depends heavily on the course of the mother’s pregnancy (stage α) whether the child is born with a rather positive or rather negative sense of well-being, as the mother’s well-being has a formative effect on the child. This means that the actor comes into the natural environment with a pre-programmed basic tone of feelings, where it must now learn to react to the environment independently, without biochemical/electrical input from the mother – and may even bring subtle emotional patterns from previous incarnations (n) with it (stage Ω):
“No behavior, even if it is new for the individual, means an absolutely new beginning. It is always transferred to already existing plans and therefore basically only means the assimilation of new elements to already established structures.” (Piaget 2003: 54) – More on this in the following chapter (in this context, consider the aspects of reincarnation (see above/below) – stage Ω).
A biologically shaped habitus is formed, as the embryo is flooded with auditory signals, muscle contractions (kinetics), chemical substances (medication, alcohol, drugs, etc.) and hormones when the mother is in a state of mind. And even the placenta, like a capacitor, is only a limited buffer that cannot compensate for prolonged hormone overloads in order to ensure the safe development of the unborn child (Hüther 2011: 26ff).
The field of thoughts is somewhat more complex, as many complex fields come together here. On the one hand, I refer here to the work of C.G. Jung (see above), Puthoff (see above), Alke DH (see above) and Dunne/Bisaha (see above) but also to the spiritual similarities that are common to many primitive peoples, esoterics and the great religions, which, as we have seen, reflect real connections in the world. I am talking here specifically about telepathy but also channeling, which is basically the same as telepathy, astral travel (with the possibility of accessing stage Ω), spirits and gods (as we and other peoples call them with sometimes very different but also often very similar interpretations). The above findings more than suggest that real forces are being recorded here in some form. We are hardly aware of our own abilities (see above). To exclude such phenomena and beliefs from such an overview from the outset would be tantamount to discriminating against ethnic minorities and cultural components of many peoples. The general rejection of such possibilities by (Prof.) Inquisitor or even fighting against it can be equated with a kind of racism and is reminiscent of totalitarian systems that tend to hunt and persecute people, as the (Catholic) Inquisition proved with its witch burnings and mass executions of ethnically independent peoples such as the Cathars in the Middle Ages, or the dark period of the 20th century in Europe with the persecution of Jews and despots’ lust for world domination!
The factor of telepathy should be considered here as a possibility of communication in the concept of thoughts that has hardly been recognized so far, in which people with relatively similar attitudes and relatively homogeneous ways of thinking can exchange information with each other without speaking to each other or using other technical or mimicry aids. Empathy may be a precursor to telepathy and we simply do not (yet) understand it. The field of thoughts also includes ideological anchoring through information carriers in society and is therefore also anchored in social space. The opinions of the population, and therefore also of our children, are influenced and steered in certain directions through the targeted dissemination of information. Here we should remember (monetarist) neoliberalism, but also religious rituals, fairy tales and, particularly politically charged, the “(un)modern” school system in its symbolic obstruction of the development of our offspring (see also various writings by Hüther et al. and many other authors (professors, doctors, educators, entrepreneurs, mothers, etc.).
The field of culture(s) encompasses a stronger anchoring in society, manifested ideologies in the mind of the person, which shape their habitus. I see engrams as distinct from habitus, since engrams can be anchored much more strongly in the body through conditioning, while habitus is aimed more at the social space, although engrams are again associated with this, especially with regard to the subtle differences (Bourdieu) in the respective etiquette. Conventions, on the other hand, are agreements that are not limited to the habitus or cultural regulations alone. These can be intimate agreements in sexual relations between two or more (intimate) partners or to take part in a (soccer) match.
As the most general field, I continue to use information, which can exist in part completely detached from all other fields and may not even have to flow into the socialization of the actor. And even if it plays an important role for the child in incarnation (x), it can be completely irrelevant in subsequent incarnations (n) (stage Ω). The 6 fields therefore affect all of the child’s environments, but some of them can also completely bypass the child and be insignificant. It is the relevant experiences that shape the child, be it only for this or other incarnations (stage Ω) and shape its actions in this incarnation or only in subsequent ones (stage Ω), while it has already been shaped by past incarnations (stage Ω) in this life.
Outside the intimate environment, more limited to the purely social environment, social encounters also contribute more or less to the socialization of the child in the social context (here I am borrowing from the work of Erving Goffman (1961) – AlkeTOR 2016d), whereby the social here also extends to the areas of the paternal, intimate and biological environment .
The Natural Environment includes a large number of other factors that are not defined in more detail (in the sense of Goffman’s interaction membrane), which are not necessary for the basic understanding of this work and also include elements that do not play a role in the child’s socialization or that encompass our individual assimilation and accommodation structures beyond those listed here and can serve to expand the model listed here. The Natural Environment thus provides the framework for including other previously unknown factors and formulating further environments.
This completes the schematic representation of a child’s socialization. The only thing I have not yet explained in more detail is assimilation and accommodation according to Jean Piaget. Since assimilation and accommodation play a central role in our socialization, both in the formation of engrams, emotions, thoughts, culture(s), conventions and information as well as in our ability to sharpen our perceptual skills and form our identity (cf. Piaget (see below)), I will explain these in more detail in the following chapter. Once these have been sufficiently described and the biological environment (stage α) has been emphasized in the shaping of our emotions, I will expand Piaget’s stage concept to include the new dimensions introduced here (stages Ω and α).
Assimilation and accommodation
Based on selected parts of the work of Jean Piaget (2003), I will explain the significance of “assimilation and accommodation” (Piaget 2003: 53) for the (emotional) development of the child. The concept of assimilation is again closely related to biology (cf. ibid.) and is generally understood to mean “[…] the integration of external elements into the developing or closed structures of an organism” (ibid.). Once such external elements have been incorporated into the organism’s interior, into its biology, physiology and psychology – its world of thought – “[…] the necessary “reaction competencies” […] are formed” (ibid: 54). However, assimilation on its own would be associated with a bureaucratic utopia of immutability. Pure assimilation does not change any maps (Spitzer (see above)) in the human organism but merely supplements structures that already fit the existing ones without changing old ones. Development would be impossible in this sense and even the adaptation of other structures would only be possible to a limited extent:
“However, biological assimilation never exists without its counterpart, accommodation. For example, during embryonic development, a phenotype assimilates the substances it needs to maintain the structures determined by its genotype. But depending on whether these substances are abundant or scarce, or whether the usual substances are replaced by others that show slight differences, non-hereditary variations (often called “accommodations”) can occur, […]” (Piaget 2003: 55)
Piaget (2003: 56) describes the integration of external elements into the child’s psyche/mind as “[…] cognitive adaptation […]”, which expresses nothing other than the “[…] balance between assimilation and accommodation” (ibid.). These formed structures on which the child’s behavior, actions and interactions with the environment are based can generally be called engrams (see above in Alke DH). These maps of the psyche, our routines, flow through our psyche, our organism, our thoughts and our emotions in particular. Adaptation – the balance between assimilation and accommodation “[…] characterizes a complete act of intelligence” (ibid.: 57) – also applies to our emotional development, which is closely linked to our biology and psychology. The imbalance between assimilation and accommodation also applies to them if the external elements cannot be taken over into one’s own organism, a failed adaptation.
An example:
The math teacher17 refuses to allow children to deviate from the previous calculation method and punishes this with poor grades, which is common practice in Germany, although in many cases these modified calculation methods actually represent improvements or can simply be better understood by the respective child. The math teacher deliberately sabotages the emerging act of intelligence and severely damages the child’s developmental potential. Recognizing the child’s performance would mean treating it as an equal! The child would have to be given credit for his or her own performance, which may reveal a better understanding of the subject matter than the teacher himself or herself is capable of – a striking flaw in our education system. These deviating solution strategies are very much in demand in the field of computer science and often lead to striking process optimizations that were previously unknown (or were repeatedly nipped in the bud by a math teacher (x)). This example is best illustrated by references to mathematics, but is not limited to areas of mathematics and is to be regarded as generally valid:
“Broadly speaking, this increasing balance between assimilation and accommodation is an example of a fundamental process in cognitive development that can be described as centering and decentering. The systematically distorting assimilations of the sensorimotor or first representational stages – which distort because they are not accompanied by adequate accommodations – mean that the subject remains centered on his own actions and point of view. On the other hand, the gradually emerging balance between assimilation and accommodation is the result of a series of decentrations [Abweichungen von bekannten Rechenwegen]that enable the subject to adopt the point of view of other subjects or objects. We used to describe this process simply as egocentrism and socialization. But it concerns far more generally and fundamentally cognition in all its manifestations [- including the emotions and or previously unknown perceptual possibilities of our sensory organs (cf. the CIA work above]. For cognitive progress is not only the assimilation of information; it also contains a systematic process of decentration, which is a necessary condition of objectivity in general.” (Piaget 2003: 61f)
If an imbalance prevails in our assimilation and accommodation structures, this even encourages the formation of exaggerated egoism, which is to a large extent inherited through the nature of our society – the evil nature of man (see above) is therefore a product of our unbalanced upbringing, not our innate nature! The bureaucratic utopia, pure assimilation without accommodation, is therefore highly susceptible to exaggerated egoistic tendencies in the actor. Consequently, the counterpart of egoism, altruism, would most likely be promoted by a socialization that promotes accommodation processes to a particularly high degree in human development, especially in childhood, which is actively sabotaged by our education system through math teachers, for example. Not through mathematics, but by punishing deviations, which in this particular case damages accommodation processes and even prevents future accommodation processes. A predictable and controllable bureaucrat is born when the math teacher has permanently damaged the child’s ability to accommodate. This connection becomes particularly clear in the following quote:
“When assimilation outstrips accommodation (i.e., when the characteristics of the object are taken into account only insofar as they coincide with the subject’s present interests), thought develops into egocentric[18] or even autistic direction.” (Piaget 2003: 57f)
It would be just as wrong to claim that pure accommodation without assimilation promotes the altruistic nature of human beings and counteracts excessive selfishness. Rather, the balance between the two, the adaptation, is crucial for the healthy development of the child. The example of the math teacher primarily describes cases in which special developments in children are obviously hindered and I assume that most math teachers (x) are not even aware of this – let me remind you once again: the example is not limited to mathematics and by no means assumes that every teacher behaves in this way, but according to my school experience and the problems of our education system, which are very widely known in scientific circles, it is probably the rarer exception. Without constant new assimilation measures on the part of the child, it cannot carry out any accommodation measures, just as vice versa. If the child is not able to abstract from learning to drive a car to learning to ride a motorcycle because it does not see the motorcycle as a vehicle (to put it bluntly), it will have difficulties assimilating and accommodating (cf. in this context also Piaget 2003: 85f). For example, an actor without basic knowledge of programming cannot (v)grasp complicated source texts for an operating system, or learn a language without a basic understanding of communication, which the unborn child receives rudimentarily in the womb (stage α), as well as its emotional maturity and development. Its personal subjective perspective of the environment (here the programming) denies it an objective view of the necessary structures of a program code, with its own purposeful grammar (syntax). And against the background of different incarnations (n) (stage Ω), this ability to adapt is by no means limited to the processes and sequences in incarnation (x).
This should make the importance of assimilation and accommodation in our development as humans clear and sufficiently understandable for the illustration of the “human socialization landscape” (see above). In the following, I will now take a simplified look at Piaget’s stage concept itself and expand it to include the new dimensions of socialization. (Ω and α) from the previous chapters and adapt them accordingly.
Emotions and Piaget's stage concept
Now that the complexity (stages Ω and α), which has not yet been taken into account by science, has been made clear and many more dimensions flow into our human development than is generally recognized or people are aware of, I will apply this extension to the stage concept of Jean Piaget (1986). According to Piaget, the development of the subject only begins at birth, where his stage concept – specifically the area of the “[…] sensorimotor stage” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 13) also known as “[…] sensorimotor intelligence” (ibid.: 15) – begins with six areas. According to Piaget, in this phase of the six areas, the child already has a pre-linguistic “[…] intelligence […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 15) which allows the child “[…] to organize reality according to a system of spatio-temporal and causal structures” (ibid.). All areas are based on assimilation and accommodation activities. The areas are subdivided as follows:
1. “Stage I […] spontaneous and total activities of the organism […] and […, the] reflex […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 17)
2. “Stage II […] the first habits […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 19)
3. “Stage III […] vision and grasping [werden] are coordinated […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 20)
4. stage “[…] IV […] more complete acts of practical intelligence” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 21)
5. stage “[…] V […] “documentary behavior” […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 21)
6 “Stage VI […] inner combinations […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 22)
In the first stage, it is not the reflexes themselves, but the spontaneous and total activities of the organism, which can also find expression in reflexes. The child repeats “[…] spontaneously […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 17) and begins to form the first recognizable habits. Once such a habit has been formed, the child is in the second stage of sensorimotor intelligence. However, these are not yet particularly targeted in their relationship to the environment and are limited purely to achieving “[…] desired purpose[s] […]” (ibid.: 19) of the child. As soon as the child begins to use its habits in a coordinated manner in order to achieve a specific goal and (still) only randomly applies a habit that suits the purpose, the child is in the third stage according to Piaget, “[…] the threshold to intelligence […]” (ibid.: 21). As soon as the child no longer uses a suitable habit to achieve a purpose by chance but in a targeted manner, Piaget speaks of practical intelligence, “[…] the means used are borrowed exclusively from already known assimilation schemes […]” (ibid.). If the child now specifically adapts these means anew, “[…] by differentiating the known schemata […]” (ibid.) Piaget speaks of “subordinate behavior”. Here, it deliberately and consciously adapts familiar processes in order to achieve the same goal using different means. The process of accommodation is now used specifically in exchange with the environment. In the final stage, the inner combination, the “[…] completion […]” (ibid.: 23) of the sensorimotor stage occurs. The child begins to develop new solutions without direct interaction with the environment; the interplay between assimilation and accommodation can now take place purely in the child’s mind (cf. ibid.: 22) before it decides on a solution in interaction with the environment. Piaget frames this development in the period of the first 7 years of life (cf. Piaget/Inhelder 1986). Depending on the child and its disposition, there may be deviations here (cf. ibid.).
This process of sensorimotor intelligence, which harbors a multitude of assimilation and accommodation schemes, is the foundation of the child’s development, its developmental and intelligence potential. However, we have already learned in the chapter Biological foundations of prenatal socialization that this socialization, the development of the child, already begins with conception in the womb (stage α). And if we further consider the aspects of reincarnation (see above – stage Ω) and epigenetics (see above – stage α: biological environment), schemata from previous lives (stage Ω) already intervene in the child’s assimilation and accommodation abilities, at least as far as the child’s mental level is concerned (see Fig. Human socialization landscape).
Against the background of the previous chapter, we must expand the stage concept precisely with regard to its deviations and the dimension of prenatal socialization, as well as through reincarnation (stage Ω) and epigenetics (stage α). One could basically add a stage α (alpha – the first letter in the Greek alphabet), which stands for the prenatal socialization of the human being – the incarnation (x) corresponding to the socialization landscape of the human being – all conditioning and socialization processes in the prenatal stage. Stage (α) is thus primarily limited to the child’s biological environment , with strong influences from the child’s intimate environment, in this stage (α) primarily through the father and mother. According to this view, the child must therefore become involved in a (largely – stage Ω) unfamiliar environment and must now manage many processes of its own body independently and without a physical connection to the mother. The first seven years of life of the intelligence formation process according to Piaget are then possibly not the formation of intelligence as such, but the formation of intelligence in the socially conformist sense. This is supported by the findings of Alke DH (2000a, 2002c, 2004a/b), Yang et al. (2015), Tucker (2015), Ali/Spence/Bremner (2015) and others (see above) and imply imprints specifically in the form of emotions, engrams, cultural customs (culture(s)), conventions and simple information, all at a very simple level for our perception – but possibly also at a very complex level. This pre-conforming intelligence (stages Ω and α), as I am assuming here, would therefore be present in a stage that is to be set before stage α and is very subtle, containing emotions and engrams that are barely comprehensible (for us in adulthood). For this, I would like to introduce the stage Ω (omega – the last letter in the Greek alphabet), which corresponds to the incarnation (n) from the illustration of the human socialization landscape. In the mythological sense, Ω is also regarded as the completion of a process, the creative power of nature when the circle closes and something new emerges (cf. Alke DH 2000c). Ω should thus contain the totality of incarnations (n)(the individual chronicle of development) and serve as a basis for the most essential and formative engrams of the child in incarnation (x). Here we must distinguish between two dimensions. Dimension (a) stands for the biological facet in the sense of epigenetics. The findings of epigenetics (Beckers/Hrabe de Angelis – see above) have proven that parents pass on learned behavior to their offspring through their genetic material via sperm and egg. There is therefore a genetic imprinting of the children’s behavioral tendencies in certain life situations on a biological level, in addition to the emotional imprinting by the mother, especially during pregnancy (stage α). The second dimension (b) focuses on the aspect of reincarnation (Alke DH; Tucker – see above) (stage Ω). Through its incarnations (n), the child experiences above all engrammatic imprints, which are characterized by certain memories of these lives or also influence or even determine certain behaviours in incarnation (x) with certain emotionally formative experiences. Conventions could probably only be transmitted from these phases through strong emotional and engrammatic imprints and probably find their primary expression in the emotional state of the child and later of the adult. They can have their origin in culture(s) from one incarnation(s) or be linked to highly individual experiences from one or more incarnations. Even the choice of parents is not left to chance due to the biological influences of the choice of partner (Hüther/Krens (2011)) and influences on a spiritual level.
To a certain extent, one can assume a causality in the choice of parents by the child, in that it chooses a pair of parents, and the parents choose the child which match each other in terms of the degree of assimilation and accommodation, probably primarily from an emotional point of view, not from a cognitive one. The cognitive side depends primarily on the incarnation (x), possibly combined with engrams from incarnation (n). An intelligence of some kind that eludes our conventional understanding of intelligence must therefore be present. From this point of view, one could contradict C.G. Jung’s statement (see above) that the findings of telepathy defy the laws of causality. There may be some kind of causality (probably more certain than probable), but it eludes our current understanding of space, time and causality. Be it that we have a lack of understanding, the events elude our ability to perceive, possibly because these are atrophied (cf. Yang et al. 2015), or because we do not want to perceive possible underlying causalities because they elude our upbringing, our social conditioning in its understanding of intelligence with the associated assimilation and accommodation schemes.
The stages Ω and α are thus each defined with their characteristics and are ideally defined as follows and preceded by Piaget’s stages 1-6:
Stage Ω: The sum of engrammatical/emotional imprints from incarnation(s).
Stage α: The biological imprinting of the child through socialization in the womb and genetic inheritance.
Following the stages Ω and α, stages 1-6 according to Piaget represent the formation of intelligence in the socially conformist sense and are influenced by the assimilation and accommodation structures that result from the stages Ω and α.
Before concluding this paper, I will now turn my attention to the specific emotion of fear, as it is very central to our society today and is considered by a number of academics to be a natural state. As we have seen, consideration of the Ω and α stages leads to the conclusion that this is not the case. More on this in the following chapter.
Anxiety is Not a State of Nature: A Critique of Erikson in Giddens
With this concluding chapter, I would like to contradict a common practice among scientists who regard fear as a natural state of man and an omnipresent part of human life. While this may seem plausible to Western culture in its fidelity to the Bible and ecstatic anticipation of the Last Judgement, I disagree.
The term anxiety is derived from the Latin word angustus (colloquially ango)19 and has the following meanings in this ancient origin20In the spatial sense, it means narrow, small in space. In the sense of a physical form, it means narrow; in the temporal sense, it means limited or short. In relation to possessions it means scarce, limited, sparse or small and in relation to external circumstances it means precarious, difficult. Other meanings speak of a narrow-mindedness(animi angusti est > es zeugt v. Engherzigkeit) or also of the meaning short (concise).
A connoisseur of texts critical of economics and aware of the close links between religion and economics (I am alluding here to one of the best-known sociological texts: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber), the translations beschränkt, knapp, gering should stand out in particular, as they form the basis of our entire (Protestant/religious) economy, because the economy, according to the fundamental concepts of itself, is based on laws of scarcity, resources are limited and supply is low. Since it is precisely the economy or, in biblical style, the clergy/ecclesiastical authorities that profit from these fears and represent one of the best known and probably most widely used instruments, I see fear primarily as a (socialization) instrument used by ethically and morally questionable actors to exert (widespread) influence on other actors.
In the broadest sense, my critique is an excerpt from one of my earlier papers on Anthony Giddens and Erving Goffman’s encounters in comparison. This paper was originally written after the original version of this emotion paper and takes into account a criticism by a lecturer, which in my opinion is ill-conceived and out of date! It is also clear that I tend to follow the psychoanalytical school of C.G. Jung in my work, while Erikson’s model is in the tradition of Sigmund Freud. Competing psychoanalytical approaches therefore also meet here and I give priority to C.G. Jung’s approach, as it is more open and takes account of phenomena that Sigmund Freud ignored or fought against and which are increasingly being taken into account today in individual milieus of the academic and public world.
I will begin this review with Giddens’ interpretation of Erikson (AlkeTOR 2016c: Chap. Influences on encounters) as it is necessary for understanding the actual critique and then return to my original critique of Erikson (AlkeTOR 2016c: Chap. A critique of Erikson in Giddens) in a form adapted for this thesis:
As Giddens criticizes Goffman’s lack of engagement with motivation, he introduces a consideration of this in a modified form in critical reflection of Sigmund Freud (cf. Giddens 1997: 100), which is characterized by the fact that he understands actions in a plural and not just singular “[…] processuality […] […]” (ibid.), which goes beyond psychological factors and can also include physical and environmental factors from a wide range of historical events. These conglomerates of processuality thus lead to the routine of everyday life21 and are differently pronounced from individual to individual and encounter to encounter, based on “[…] certainty of being […]” (ibid.: 101).
According to Giddens (1997: 101; following Erikson 1973 in Giddens 1997: 101ff), this certainty of being of psychological origin lies “[…] in the fundamental mechanisms of fear control […] which are hierarchically arranged as components of personality” (Giddens 1997: 101) and their development through “[…] feelings of trust […]” (ibid.), which is the result of the “[…] caring routines of the parents […]” (ibid.), as well as a steady “[…] increase in autonomy […]” (ibid.) of the child itself. According to Erikson, these feelings of trust are the result of early childhood experiences22which only acquire their actual meaning through fear (cf. ibid.: 104-108) and through “[…] “primal trust” and “primal mistrust” […]” (ibid.: 104) accompany the actor throughout his or her life. If the actor now enters a critical situation23 (dealing with actors of a different class; love at first sight, which immediately makes one forget the entire surrounding situation; an unexpected job offer with very good conditions; etc.), a state of anxiety is characteristic of this, according to Giddens. This fundamental attitude must already be present at a pre-linguistic stage.24 Erikson, in Giddens’ words, since the actor already behaves in this way without linguistic skills and would act accordingly, whereby the “[…] birth […]” (ibid.: 112) must be an anxiety-producing act, just as “[…] death […]” (ibid.) a break in the life cycle:
By “critical situations” I mean events characterized by a radical, unpredictable rupture that affects a significant number of individuals; situations that threaten or destroy the certainty of institutionalized routines.” (Giddens 1997: 112)
Only with his certainty of being does Giddens really introduce an element that differs from Goffman’s, [in das Modell der Begegnungen] which, following Erikson, primarily influences the life cycle of an actor through fear control and is largely limited purely to the individual actor. If byplay and postplay are used to refresh an encounter in Goffman, even this section in Giddens’ model is not really an innovation. In this context, however, I must cite a criticism of Erikson on my part, as I do not believe that anxiety in its multifaceted forms is innate to every actor in an identical way and is therefore by no means a natural state [but rather acquired, possibly via epigenetic pathways (see above) – stage α].
According to this view, which is based on Erikson, all reactions of peoples outside of Western ideas would represent abnormal reactions and would probably be classified as mental illnesses, as they sometimes express something like fear in opposite situations. This would mean, for example, that festive celebrations with a good mood in honor of the deceased can only be explained by a mental illness of the culture, since the Western [abendländisch Kultur] almost falls into self-pity and reacts almost appatically when a death occurs, even if it affects a completely unknown person on the other side of the world. The core problem has already been identified: cultural differences, which are also reflected in the emotional state of the people involved! For example, there are religious people who show fear reactions when they see a black cat, while others try to stroke it and are happy […; about the fluffy animal]. Still other actors experience ecstatic states when parachuting from a height of several kilometers[s], while others become unconscious from sheer fear before they even stand at the door of the plane, apart from fear of flying itself, which again only occurs in certain people. So even in our own society Actors who react to certain situations with great fear (to the point of unconsciousness, in rare extreme cases even to the point of death) while others remain completely calm or even experience ecstasy. These everyday examples alone can only contradict the idea of a “natural state of fear in humans” and in no way be seen as a given, rather the opposite. Such a natural state of fear in all people would have to imply a general homogeneity of emotional reaction patterns in society, which simply does not exist!
As early as “[…] 1919, John Watson and Rosalie Rayner conducted the famous experiment to show that fear can be conditioned (cf. Watson/Rayner 1920)” (Rinck/Becker 2011: 110), albeit with only moderate success, not to mention the ethical and moral problems of these experiments with humans at the time. However, proof of the learnability of fear was provided by “[…] animal experiments […]” (ibid.: 112), including the Pavlovian dog and analyses “[…] by Susan Mineka and her colleagues […]” (Bouton/Mineka/Barlow in Rinck/Becker 2011: 112). Furthermore, even back then it was possible to eradicate fears and phobias later in life through conditioning and certain learning successes. Ehlers/Margraf (1989 in Rick/Becker: 121) show in their “[…] psychophysiological model of anxiety attacks […]” (ibid.) that by no means every person in a stressful situation tends to have an “[…] anxiety attack […]” (ibid.), a combination of “[…] stressors and external stimuli […]” (ibid.) which can only become anxiety through associations by the actor himself. [Die Verbindung zwischen Biologie und Soziologie wird hier ebenfalls mehr als deutlich.] Tension reactions must therefore be distinguished from anxiety reactions, while the associations made by the actor are of a cultural, educational or experiential nature [und auf voneinander abweichenden Assmiliations- und Akkommodationsschemata aufbauen]. As a result, Erikson’s natural state of anxiety in humans can only be seen as a false conclusion! Taking into account the results of prenatal research and the neurosciences (Holodynski/Friedlmeier 2006; Spitzer 2006; Hüther/Krens 2011), anxiety is an emotion that is innate to humans (Kandell 2009), which is/can be triggered primarily by social pressure or arises through traumatic experiences, but also through the close symbiotic connection between mother and child during pregnancy. The child is confronted in the womb [stage – α] with all of the mother’s hormonal stimuli (the placenta is far more permeable than is generally known (cf. Hüther/Krens 2011 [s .o.])) and can thus receive an (emotional) imprint from the mother, which has a significant influence on all subsequent stimuli and (emotional) developments of the child. At the same time, these findings contradict Giddens’ assertion that children in the pre-linguistic stage already have the same anxiety reaction patterns as all actors in a society ([…]). It can thus serve as a control mechanism for behavior and actions, as a boundary for safety-relevant barriers, but also to prevent unwelcome behavior, as well as an instrument of power to ensure compliance, if applied accordingly.
And as has already been described, tension (e.g. as a result of seeing a longed-for person) does not always have to be the result of a negative experience and automatically trigger something like fear. If you are playing football and are afraid of losing all the time, you are unlikely to stay focused on the ball and consciously stay with the team to do your best to win, let alone risk anything to get closer to victory, whereas healthy tension (everyone reacts differently) increases commitment and alertness. Especially since Giddens himself does not deal with tension and relaxation in the narrower sense, which means that a fundamental dynamic of social interactions is largely missing in his model, which Goffman explicitly takes into account through tension and relaxation and which can only be found in Giddens’ model within the framework of seriality. This means that even the certainty of being that is actually to be re-evaluated is already implicitly contained in Goffman’s model, only in a more abstract formulation, without a fixation on a state of anxiety, which offers more far-reaching connection possibilities than would ever be possible with Giddens and describes the core of the process itself, the social dynamic. A process that only unfolds its universal reach in Goffman’s formulation of the interaction membrane.
This should have made it clear that fear is not a natural state and why I do not regard this conditioned emotion as an elementary component of my emotion work. I by no means want to rule out the possibility that something like fear itself can be transferred from the Ω stage to the α-7, but these are also (predominantly) socialization/experience patterns from incarnations (n), solely due to their completely individual and highly different patterns. Although there are similarities, such as the fear of spiders or other animals, these are always related to a previous experience or primary caregiver and were ultimately anchored in humans through specific assimilation and accommodation patterns. Fear is something we are taught, it is not a natural part of our nature. The interplay between tension and relaxation, on the other hand, is a natural part of our physiology and (para)psychology! The final outlook will once again briefly summarize the key findings and conclusions of this work and summarize suggestions for further analyses from this work.
Conclusion and outlook
As this work has shown, fear is by no means a natural human condition. Our often criticized selfish behaviour can be traced back to (deliberately) faulty upbringing by our parents and the education system. Conversely, we can develop into prudent people through a holistic upbringing. The central sections of the work have made it clear that through adaptation (Piaget), the balance between assimilation & accommodation – a complete act of intelligence – (Piaget), we absorb engrams in the form of (emotional) behaviors on many known and sometimes unknown levels, which significantly influence our social interaction. It is precisely in our nervous system that the biological environment forms central representational areas or, to put it simply, maps (Spitzer/Kandell), which shape our basic behavior “from” our birth in the prenatal (Hüther/Krens) stage α. In addition, particularly strong engrams can be formed by transmission structures that have hardly been recognized to date (cf. Dunne/Bisaha 1979; Jung 1990; Puthoff (CIA) 1996; Alke DH 2000a, 2002c, 2004a/b; Ali/Spence/Bremner 2015; Tucker 2015; Yang et al. 2015) such as reincarnation (embodied by the Individual Chronicle of Development – stage Ω), Telepathy, astral travel & television (remote viewing) (stages Ω – 7) and genetic inheritance of learned behaviors (Epigenetics: Prof. Johannes Beckers & Prof. Martin Hrabe de Angelis in Schultes 2016 – Stage α) the child in its development and its appearance and handling in this Incarnation (x) and promote or inhibit the child’s range of action, whereby the child is likely to be influenced according to its Pre-compliant intelligence will select relatively suitable parents who also decide to choose the child, correspond to their Social intelligence – It is a joint process of the expectant family, even if this view will not suit some parents if they have problems with their children and vice versa. Put more simply, the assimilation and accommodation structures of parent and child match in the most fundamental ways, especially emotionally. And as the results compiled in Sanders (2016) have shown, we are born with extremely complex and versatile/multi-layered perceptual and differentiation skills, which we usually unlearn relatively quickly after birth, in the sense of a conformist intelligence. We even have moral decision-making behavior shortly after birth (Schmidt/Sommerville 2011) – or are we only able to grasp this as observers when our children are a few months old?
The entirety of Piaget’s extended sensorimotor stages can thus be summarized as follows and places the last letter of the Greek alphabet Ω (omega), as the embodiment of a completed developmental process (an incarnation (n)), before the first letter of the Greek alphabet α (alpha), as the new beginning of a development process (an incarnation (x)), in order to take into account the belief in reincarnation that exists in many cultures and the research that now exists in this area, the ignorance of which is already reminiscent of discrimination by scientists and their decadence:
Ω. The stage of the sum of engrammatical/emotional imprints from incarnation(s).
α. The stage of biological imprinting of the child through socialization in the womb and genetic inheritance.
1. “Stage I […] spontaneous and total activities of the organism […] and […, the] reflex […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 17)
2. “Stage II […] the first habits […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 19)
3. “Stage III […] vision and grasping [werden] are coordinated […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 20)
4. stage “[…] IV […] more complete acts of practical intelligence” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 21)
5. stage “[…] V […] “documentary behavior” […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 21)
6 “Stage VI […] inner combinations […]” (Piaget/Inhelder 1986: 22)
Apart from this, when a child enters adolescence and reaches sexual maturity, he or she is confronted with a further flood of new emotions and the urge to reproduce and has to cope with a far greater variety of emotions as they grow up, not to mention the rules of the game, role-playing and theater games within society. Every subject experiences emotional highs and lows during this developmental phase, whereby the physiology also changes fundamentally once again and the organism is confronted with new hormones. The growing child must experience these new emotions and learn how to deal with them (formation of further representational areas (Spitzer/Kandell) in the nervous system) in order to lead an independent life later on or not to suffer any disadvantages due to emotional immaturity (e.g. in every potential conflict situation). For example, to flee immediately in every potential conflict situation and thus never learn to assert oneself or, conversely, to seek confrontation in every situation, although withdrawal would be the better choice in certain situations in the long term – both of which, it should be noted, are again closely linked to Piaget’s intelligence and whether the child was primarily socialized with fear or a positive relationship to the environment). As the child matures, it acquires an increasingly differentiated perception of feelings (and logical perceptual processes) with hundreds or thousands of nuances, which require the processing of an enormous amount of stimuli (information) that could only be consciously and logically grasped over years, but undergo dozens of simultaneous evaluations in a matter of seconds in order to end in a subtle to expressive change in well-being and to react with different emotions (facial expressions, body posture, voice acoustics, pronunciation, customs, conventions, role behavior, consideration of the needs of others, consideration of one’s own and other interests, etc.), which in short can only be achieved through emotions.), which in short is only possible through emotions and engrams, provided these are in a relative balance to assimilation with their accommodative character.
For without assimilation, the emotions and engrams would not receive any stability and without accommodation, the established assimilation structures would not experience any changes, which in short would mean entropy or stagnation and would leave no room for development, at least not in a socially acceptable context that promotes autonomy and individuality, and would simply end in a “structural idiocy” of assimilation – a utopia of bureaucracy and associated control constraints, probably created primarily by fear-driven people.
An actor without this balance between assimilation and accommodation would probably react in extremes between absolutely serious (logically rational) and absolutely emotional (the feelings uninhibitedly block the view for the objective), as can be observed in small children who, for example, after suddenly crying, perceive a new object in their immediate surroundings and focus all their concentration on this object, forgetting everything around them, even that they were crying shortly before.
The experience of emotions in the early phase of development is therefore not adapted to our social conventions(pre-conforming intelligence), but is in any case already present within the biological environment (stage α) and increases until adolescence (puberty) with a developing balance between assimilation and accommodation and, with sexual maturity and the further course of development, reaches a wide range of experienceable emotions with ever finer nuances, which require equally more differentiated (more socially conforming) assimilation structures than in the case of an infant.
Emotions therefore play a central role in human development and are particularly decisive for the ability to develop of each individual and therefore, in a figurative sense, of society as a whole.
While the assimilation structures in the early development of the subject are still relatively pre-formed and accommodation is permanently active due to constant changes, which the child is forced to make due to its rapidly changing physiology and the constant increase in new perceptible stimuli, when entering the social structure, the child is primarily emotionally/engrammatically controlled, whereby this control has already experienced a (largely) pre-conforming imprinting/socialization through the biological environment (stage α) and the individual chronicle of development (stage Ω).
With increasing development and (again) increasing ability to differentiate (i.e. socialization conforming to society), the actor reaches a state of intelligence conforming to society.
This balance has an equal effect on the development of a person’s emotional constitution, which is strongly influenced by the mother(biological environment) and has a retroactive effect on the development of the child’s intelligence. In addition, socialization is a lifelong process with the formation of increasingly differentiated (new) structures in the actor, only that with ever longer applied assimilation structures, deviations from these become increasingly unlikely or more costly, which describes the inertia and determinacy of the habitus (e.g. the fixation in a social status) and emphasizes the importance of the influence of the social and natural environment on the development of the child, especially the imprinting in the early development of the child.
Our “modern” knowledge of our development as human beings leaves many gaps – especially in the tradition of monetarist neoliberalism, but also in the history of church rule – and it is regrettable that so few scientists are prepared to use the fundamental background of myths and spiritual values to draw conclusions about our mental, biological and social development.
Footnotes
- In the original: “Six-month-old babies can spot subtle differences between two monkey faces easy as pie. But 9-month-olds – and adults – are blind to the differences.“ ↑
- Three- to 4-month-old babies can see differences in lighting that are undetectable to adults. This ephemeral superskill evaporates just months later, scientists reported in December in Current Biology.“ ↑
- In the original: “With experience, babies probably learn that these subtle differences aren’t usually important. ‘As a result, infants lose this striking ability,’ Yang says.“ ↑
- “The unborn child also does not perceive individual words, but the speech melody and the associated emotional mood of what is spoken or sung.” (Hüther/Krens 2011: 88) ↑
- In the original: “[…], infant language expert Janet Werker of the University of British Columbia and colleagues found […]”. ↑
- Cf. in the original: “When our arms are crossed, we often mistake which hand is getting touched. Our worldly experience tells us that a touch on the left side of our body usually means our left hand was touched (but when our arms are crossed, our right hand is there instead). Young babies are no such fools. Four-month-olds know which crossed foot actually got a tickle – they don’t get turned around like adults do. Just two months later, this precision is gone, scientists reported recently in Current Biology.” (Sanders 2016) ↑
- Cf. in the original: “As we get older, we stop paying attention to subtle differences in monkey faces and lighting, which usually aren’t relevant, but we get even better at spotting differences in people’s faces. And that makes sense: Our brains are sculpted to see, hear and feel sensations that are common, and meaningful, in our particular environment.“ ↑
- Cf. in the original: “First, in contrast to past work suggesting that fairness and altruism may not emerge until early to mid-childhood, 15-month-old infants are sensitive to fairness and can engage in altruistic sharing. Second, infants’ degree of sensitivity to fairness as a third-party observer was related to whether they shared toys altruistically or selfishly, indicating that moral evaluations and prosocial behavior are heavily interconnected from early in development.” (Schmidt/Sommerville 2011: 1) – “The current study provides the first evidence that by at least 15 months of age, human infants possess the rudiments of a sense of fairness in that they expect resources to be allocated equally when observing others (third-party fairness). […] More specifically, even altruistic sharing exists in 15-month-olds: one third of infants shared the toy they preferred despite having the option to share a non-preferred toy (or to not respond at all); and virtually all of these ‘altruistic sharers’ expected third-party fairness when observing a resource allocation situation in our VOE paradigm. […]” (ibid.: 5) ↑
- Cf. in the original: “As we get older, we stop paying attention to subtle differences in monkey faces and lighting, which usually aren’t relevant, but we get even better at spotting differences in people’s faces. And that makes sense: Our brains are sculpted to see, hear and feel sensations that are common, and meaningful, in our particular environment.“ ↑
- By natural environment I mean the summary of the biological and social environment, whereby “natural” also refers to physical objects (living ones such as trees and dead ones such as concrete), which contribute to the differentiated perception of the environment (causal spatiotemporal perception), especially in the first years of an actor’s life, and are characteristic of the stages of development in Piaget (1986:17ff). ↑
- Rebirth and moment of remembering past lives. ↑
- “JIM B. TUCKER, M.D., is Bonner-Lowry Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is the Director of the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, where he is continuing the work of Ian Stevenson with children who report memories of previous lives. […]” (Tucker 2015: Backcover) ↑
- Emphasis by the author of this paper – translated from the original by the author of this paper: “Regardless of one’s a priori position, however, an unimpassioned observer cannot help but attest to the following fact. Despite the ambiguities inherent in the type of exploration covered in these programs, the integrated results appear to provide unequivocal evidence of a human capacity to access events remote in space and time, however falteringly, by some cognitive process not yet understood. My years of involvement as a research manager in these programs have left me with the conviction that this fact bus be taken into account in any attempt to develop an unbiased picture of the structure of reality.” (Puthoff 1996: 76) ↑
- Emphasis by the author of this paper – translated from the original by the author of this paper: “It is the authors’ belief that the attitudinal environment and the initial rapport established between percipients and agent are crucial factors in remote-viewing success. In all the experiments we have conducted, we have attempted to create an atmosphere of congeniality, playfulness, and relaxation in which psi phenomena are real and natural. […] Although our present knowledge does not enable us to explain adequately the phenomenon being investigated here, the fact that this paper represents a replication of an earlier experiment suggests that remote viewing as an experimental design provides additional evidence substantiating the existence of perceptual and communication channels lying beyond the senses as they are currently defined, and offers itself as a viable vehicle for future research in parapsychology.” (Dunne/Bisaha 1979: 29)↑
- Cf. the last quote from Spitzer, which basically answers the question↑
- Many thanks to D. Harald Alke for suggesting this figurative formulation. Similar views exist in a figurative form in the teachings of Kundalini Yoga.↑
- Cf. various references to this in one of my earlier works (AlkeTOR 2016c)↑
- Emphasis by the author of this work↑
- Many thanks to D. Harald Alke for this tip!
- Passages in italics in this paragraph, with the exception of the term “fear”, are taken from the Pony (online) – URL: http://de.pons.com/übersetzung/latein-deutsch/angustus↑
- Cf. in the original: “[…] the phenomenon of certainty of being, which expresses an autonomy of bodily control within the framework of predictable routines.” (Giddens 1997: 101)↑
- Cf. in the original: “The interaction between child and mother embeds the growing human individual in a context from which, for better or for worse, there is later no escape.” (Giddens 1997: 104) – This formulation is found in Boudrieu as internalized norms and values in the habitus of the actor.↑
- Cf. in the original: “The fear of absence is absorbed by the reward of presence, which prepares the ground for the dialectic of commitment and indifference, […]. […] These mechanisms based on the phenomenon of identification are later overlaid by a variety of more mature psychological forms. In extreme situations of threat or crisis, however, they come to the fore again.” (Giddens 1997: 105): The actor usually regresses in extreme situations and falls back into old internalized patterns of behaviour. Cf. also Giddens 1979a: 123ff in Giddens 1997: 112.↑
- Cf. in the original: “It seems impossible to deny that a newborn child possesses an innate perceptual endowment. In other words, it possesses not only the sensory organs, but also neurologically based schemata, […].” (Giddens 1997: 97)↑
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The present work is a revised and substantially expanded version of the following work: Alke, Tobias O. R., 2012: Emotionen und die Entwicklung des Subjekts. From conception to adolescence. Seminar paper. Heidelberg: Max Weber Institute for Sociology.
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