Grace, Fall, and Redemption: Mental illness and Our Evolutionary Narrative
Embark with me on a journey delving deep into the relationship between severe mental illnesses and the primal emotions fueling our social interactions.
Embark with me on a journey delving deep into the relationship between severe mental illnesses and the primal emotions fueling our social interactions.
HOW COULD YOU BE SO ANGRY AT ME
HOW COULD YOU BE SO ANGRY AT ME
Some monogamy facts: 85 percent of birds, 3 to 9 percent of mammals—but fully a quarter of mammals’ primate component—are classed as monogamous. Selected species of primates began evolving monogamous social systems about 16 million years ago, relatively late in their 52-million-year history of group living. In each case, monogamy grew out of a promiscuous mating …
First off, biological instincts for morality were evolved and refined over the millions of years of hominin evolution prior to the appearance of our own Homo sapiens species some 200,000 years ago. Over and above deep feelings for justice, our peculiar species has overlain a motivational layer animated by a mania to be admired by …
This week the blog tackles the biological relevance of infidelity, apparently the next big campaign issue. First, in order to stay focused on the blog’s contribution to this wide-ranging topic we must narrow it down to just a categorical analysis of extramarital sex (while married), disregarding judgements about how it was conducted (discretion, hurtfulness and …
In 2005, Newt Gingrich gave a several minute summary on the NPR series, “This I believe.” He started out by saying, “I believe that the world is inherently a very dangerous place, and that things that are now very good can go bad very quickly.” In the following talk, he gave many examples from all …
The social structure of humans was due to a decisive-and-then-stable shift in the level of selection: from the selection of individuals (for fitness) in apes to the selection associations between individuals (for fecundity & productivity) in humans.
Pope John Paul II issued and Encyclical that stated that the Holy Spirit has been a force in human evolution.
George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life has never felt that his altruistic, group-oriented behavior is really part of “him” (he’s the one who feels trapped and wants the bigger life); and the revelation that he has been existing in this other spiritual, old-mind realm all along is a wondrous surprise to him—so much so that he now doesn’t care whether he goes to jail or not!
Jill was in turmoil. She knew that Jack had been jealous of the dog he nicknamed Sissy
The naturally and functionally “submissive” partner propels him or her into resentfully dominating the relationship.Similar to my experience treating the mental illnesses, the core emotional sickness of the reverberating resentment had to be wrestled to the ground first.
This alternative view of human nature is a deeper, richer, and far more noble narrative of our exclusively human legacy: that of an indomitable spirit possessed of a will for justice and sustained through the millennia by the bounty that it fosters.
The means by which dominance and submission between ape individuals metamorphosed into the single group structure of obedience to the authority of hominin groups.
A new genetic method of determining the nature of ancestral species has found that infanticide preceded monogamy in hominids.
Pope John Paul II issued and Encyclical that stated that the Holy Spirit has been a force in human evolution.
A scientific creation myth involving the transformation of dominance and submission into authority and obedience to Morality and Justice (The Holy Spirit).
I was aware of the Russian study demonstrating the ease with which foxes could be domesticated. I began to think that somehow a process of self-domestication had taken place as a precursor to the selection inclusion of the dominance and submissive mentalities. So, when I examined the momentous publication of the Ardipithecus ramidus fossils in …
Since I had worked in prison as a young psychiatrist, and had observed the natural facility for communication between individuals within enslaved relationships, I was sure that the interactive human mind was the evolutionary result of the internalization of the relationship that defined the signature primate hierarchical social system—dominance and submission. As discussed in the …
Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed Ardi, is arguably the most significant fossil find in the history of paleoanthropology due to its completeness and antiquity – 4.4 M. years, just 1.6 M. years after the last common ancestor with Chimpanzees. The theoretician of the group, Owen Lovejoy hypothesized that the reduction in the size of the male canine …
