[vinnomot] Humanism and Psychology: (Basic 1): Genetics and Psychology

 

Understanding Ourselves and Our Universe: How Psychology Can Turn the "Mysteries of Human Nature" into Useful Tools for Self Improvement and Success in Life

 

Part 1: Genetic psychology
Genes: the first natural determinant
In the Introductory Module just completed, we've emphasized how and why science has played such a critical role -- and continues to play an even greater role, at an even faster pace -- in revealing answers to the "mysteries of human nature." Now it is time to take a look at more of those scientific psychology answers in greater depth, and explore how participants can begin applying this knowledge to gain even greater self-understanding and success in life. This Basic Module and the Comprehensive Module to follow will provide ever deeper and more detailed insights into how all humans, including you, function as natural organisms. Those insights should prove not only enlightening but also liberating from any previous supernatural, paranormal, or NEC-based concepts you have about yourself and your universe. We'll focus on the three scientific (or, as we'll usually call them, "natural") determinants of all people's psychological repertoires. In our view, the two greatest scientific achievements in psychology's relatively brief history have been the discovery of the natural laws of learning (or conditioning), and the proposition that all "psychological processes of the mind" are actually biochemical processes of the CNS (central nervous system, or brain and spinal cord). In this Basic Module, we will introduce you to the basic principles of the genetics of psychology, psychological learning (conditioning), and psychological trauma. Then we'll explain why the vast majority of most adult humans' psychological repertoires are primarily determined by learning experiences (as compared to genetic or traumatic determinants), and how to use this serendipitous fact to make significant improvements in your life and the lives of others. (The Comprehensive Module will then address the psychophysiological processes of the human nervous systems that actually underlie genetics, learning, and trauma, and constitute sensation, perception, thinking, memory, feeling, and behaving at the all important biological level of humans as natural organisms in this wonderful natural universe.) As was introduced in the Area Overview and Introductory Module, the totality of one's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is called one's psychological repertoire, and the totality of one's unique psychological repertoire is determined by just three natural determinants: one's genes, learning experiences, and trauma. By that statement, we mean that every single thought or memory, feeling of joy, fear, or sorrow, and every action or intention to act -- by absolutely everyone, everywhere, all the time -- is completely determined by a combination of one's genes, learning, and trauma. (There are NO other causal factors at all.) Thus, understanding how these three natural determinants function and interact to pre-program, program, re-program, and de-program human cognition, affect, and behavior will dramatically increase the participant's general understanding of human psychology, and applying these natural laws and principles to a particular person -- including oneself -- will not only increase one's understanding, but should enable participant to more effectively manage and beneficially influence the psychological repertoire of themselves and/or others. First we'll summarize the basic concepts and principles of each of these three psychological determinants, and then we'll show how to apply all three to common humanistic issues in later lessons.
Genes: the first natural determinant
Genes are the contribution of our fathers and mothers resulting in our conception and birth; genes form us and give us the physical, spiritual and mental characteristics. These comprise the segments of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) code that enable humans to develop general physical capacities and specific physical functions from the moment of conception. And exactly the same genetic processes and principles apply to human psychology in exactly the same ways! That is, since an idea, or a memory, or feelings of anger or joy, or making decisions are also natural biochemical processes, they develop according to the same kinds of natural genetic processes as the rest of the body. The first question is, what causes humans to have the capacity to think the thoughts, feel the emotions, and perform the behaviors that are typical of our species? (What causes the general psychological effects?) And then, what causes the content of the exact thoughts we think, the emotions we feel, and the behaviors we perform in any specific instance? (What causes the specific psychological effects?) The basic answer is that our genes give us the general capacity to think the kinds of thoughts we think, feel the kinds of emotions we feel, and perform the kinds of behaviors we do (pre-programming), but the specific thoughts we think, feelings we feel, and behaviors we perform in response to a particular situation are mostly learned (programming). And once formed by genes or learning, trauma can then reduce or even destroy those general capacities and/or those specific abilities in many varied ways (deprogramming), as we'll address in a later lesson. Learning each of these three natural determinants will enable you to better understand which parts of your psychological repertoire are changeable (and how), and which are not (and why). Let's start with genetic pre-programming. To begin with, before our brains can actually think a thought, feel an emotion, or perform a behavior, two prerequisite functions must occur: 1.  We must have the general capacity or potential repertoire for such thoughts, feelings, or behaviors; and 2.  We must acquire the particular content of the specific thought, feeling, or behavior we experience in any given situation. Humans can't fly, but they can design and build planes and fly in them, and they can also fly ultralite aircraft and soar on hang-gliders to closely simulate flight. (Humans can also speak some chimpanzee language, and can find better things to eat than beetle larvae!) The question here is, what accounts for these differences in psychological repertoires among these different animals? And the answer is, different species are genetically pre-programmed to develop different capacities or capabilities, sometimes instinctively doing exactly the same task in different ways. Humans are genetically endowed with a unique set of capacities or capabilities among other animals, including language development. Galapagos finches and woodpeckers both eat beetle larvae that live beneath tree bark, and catch them by spearing. But woodpeckers have sharp beaks and thick "shock absorbers" in their heads to enable them to peck through tree bark and spear the exposed larvae with their sharp beaks. Finches, on the other hand, have short, thick beaks with no sharp points or shock absorbers to break through bark, but they can develop the ability to simulate woodpeckers' "natural spears" with the sharp ends of broken twigs. (Woodpeckers that break or dull their sharp beaks can't make this accommodation, and will starve to death.) The differences in their DNA/RNA (genetic pre-programming) account for both of these differences; finches can't learn to change their beak structures, and woodpeckers can't learn to simulate spears with twigs if a trauma disables their beaks. These differences are pre-programmed by very slight variations in their genes. Arguably the single most important genetic pre-program in humans is the ability to learn. In the other examples, starting in the 1950's researchers stunned the world by apparently teaching chimpanzees and other primates (including gorillas and orangutans) to use sign language, computer symbols, and other artificial mechanisms to communicate with humans in English. This remarkable breakthrough also had the effect of changing the definition of what it meant to be "human" and "non-human", since the capacity for human language was previously thought to be unique to our species. While some scientists still contest these conclusions, there have been so many verified demonstrations of human-level language by primates that we accept these results and conclusions as valid. But no one could train chimps to "speak" English out loud, because chimps do not have the oral speech mechanisms in their mouths to shape human language phonemes and words; i.e., they lack the genetic capacity to speak English or other human languages. So chimp brains can understand and produce English or othger language symbols, but their mouths can't speak it -- due to genetic pre-programming again -- and other means had to be found for them to express themselves. Once a common language medium was established (e.g., computer symbols or manual sign language), non-human primates showed surprising cognitive abilities. Incidentally, parrots can also produce human language sounds, and there is even an African Gray parrot named "Alex" in Arizona who reportedly can correctly articulate concepts such as names, shapes, colors, and sizes in answer to questions more than 90% of the time, although these claims are more suspect. Dolphins and whales (cetaceans) have been trained to successfully distinguish names, shapes, colors, and sizes, and can both receptively and expressively communicate those abstract concepts using English or other languages' language grammar and syntax if provided with mechanical language mediations (like signs), as with the chimps. By the way, these examples demonstrate the importance of comparative psychology; i.e., researching human psychological phenomena by studying non-human animals, and then generalizing the results back to our own species. They also illustrate important variations in different animals' genetically pre-programmed instincts, and how some animals have potential psychological repertoires that they rarely use in their native environments (e.g., great apes and cetaceans being able to communicate using computer symbols). These genetically pre-programmed differences in animals' repertoire of instincts and potential psychological repertoires account for almost all inter-species differences in the animal kingdom (e.g., why chimps and finches can make tools, but horses and lizards can't); and we human beings are no different. The differences in psychological repertoires between humans and non-human species are primarily due to genetic pre-programming (especially the capacities and ranges of things we can learn to think, feel, and do), as well! Another "great mystery of human nature" has been whether humans and other animals are essentially or "qualitatively different" (i.e., there are many capacities of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that humans have but no other animals have), or rather are "quantitatively different" (i.e., whether humans and at least some animals have essentially similar capacities but differ primarily in the amount and range of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors we can develop). Although research results are mixed, since at least some animals have at least some capacity to develop some human psychological traits, it may well be mostly quantitative. (And it is definitely much more quantitative than many humans think!) Our generic term for the acquisition of any and all thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is programming, partly because the psychological mechanisms and processes involved are analogous to the programming mechanisms used with computer hardware. We refer to our genes' abilities to give us our general capacities to think, feel, and act as genetic pre-programming. (The prefix "pre" is used here because, for example, we're referring only to a prior general potential capacity for thinking, not the specific thought itself. Acquiring any specific thought would be called programming.) As we've already seen, two types of psychological capabilities are genetically pre-programmed: instincts (inherited, specific thoughts, feelings, and behaviors which occur automatically in response to particular internal or external stimuli), and predispositions (capacities for developing particular types of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, but which require specific environmental conditions called "triggers" to actually manifest themselves). An example of a human instinct is babbling. All intact babies voice all the sound phonemes a human voice mechanism can produce at a particular developmental stage. An example of a human genetic predisposition is a baby shaping its babbled sounds into rudimentary words, given a certain minimal level of human stimulation and feedback. Thus, voicing human sounds is instinctive and trying to speak a human language is genetically pre-disposed; but full language development won't occur without additional, specific language-based interaction experiences with people in their environments (and thus what dialect we speak and what words we say or write are mostly learned). All intact human psychological development follows this same genetic pattern: a few instincts + many predispositions -> shaped by very many environmental learning experiences -> all the mature thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of an adult's psychological repertoire. (For non-humans, the same general developmental sequence occurs but is marked by relatively many instincts, few predispositions, and few learning experiences -> adult repertoire. More learning = more advanced potential development.) This evolved pattern of a small genetic instinctual repertoire, shaped by a large number of genetic pre-dispositions into common human patterns of development, with the specific psychological repertoire then conditioned by learning experiences, is the basic way humans adapt, or develop normally and successfully. Every human with normal genes and an intact nervous system has the same initial repertoire of genetic instincts and pre-dispositions. That's why the very early development of all human babies -- whether they develop into normal, super-normal, or even sub-normal adults -- looks almost exactly the same around the world. Regardless of gender, race, creed, culture, or nationality, all human infants with at least a minimally supportive environment follow the same s-l-o-w early developmental patterns, unless trauma prevents it from unfolding normally. Contrast this slow human developmental pattern with the much more rapid development of most other animals, and (again) the fact that the adult repertoire of most other animals is mostly instinctive, whereas the adult human repertoire is mostly learned. This is why some humans are among the most intelligent and adaptive animals on our planet. Genes get us started, but it takes the right number and kinds of learning to complete the job! (More details on exactly how the genetic mechanisms produce our structural, metabolic, and psychological repertoires -- all of which are equally "physical" -- come in the Comprehensive Module.) The earlier noted age-old "Nature vs. Nurture" question addressed this very issue; i.e., are all our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as adult humans mostly or entirely due to genetic instincts and predispositions (the "nature" or nativist position)? Or is most or all of our adult psychological repertoire learned from environmental experience (the "nurture" or empiricist position)? You should now see why the scientific resolution of that dilemma is "both," because the initial "seed" thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (personality typings) are genetically pre-programmed, but most of any adult's specific psychological repertoire is programmed by specific environmental experiences. That you speak and write a human language is genetic; that you speak English French, German etc., or with a American/Asian/or European accent, or what you write in a particular situation, is learned. Now let's consider another "age old mystery of human nature" before we complete this part. Once the basics of genetics were understood, many scientists posed the following question: If there are only a few innate human instincts -- and a very few compared to even "lower animals" like insects, fish, and birds -- then where do all the millions of adult human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors come from? At first glance, this is a really good and puzzling question! Infants do only think, feel, and do a few things, and adults -- and even children and teenagers -- do think, feel, and do hundreds of thousands and even millions of things, so where do all those additional contents of humans' psychological repertoires come from? Do Allh or Gods give them as "blessings," or are they absorbed from other people by "osmosis?" Do they just appear out of thin air? Here's the answer. It is true that normal human development begins with babies exhibiting only a tiny apparent psychological repertoire of instinctive thoughts (only the vaguest, most general ideas about themselves and the world they're directly sensing), feelings (just undifferentiated pleasure and displeasure related to basic needs such as food, water, temperature, discomfort and pain, etc.), and behaviors (just a few reflexes, and crying in response to any major displeasure). BUT humans also come with genetic predispositions to develop the millions of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that can constitute an adult psychological repertoire! Therefore, to understand both normal and abnormal human development, the key question is not, "Where do all those additional adult thoughts, feelings, and behaviors come from?" but rather, "Of all the tens of millions of possible adult thoughts, feelings, and behaviors predisposed by our genes, why do we only develop the few million or so that we actually do?" There must be some very powerful natural process that "chooses" our eventual psychological repertoire from the much larger potential repertoire we were given by our genes; some lifelong "adaptive selector" that explains why we think, feel, and act as we do at any given stage of our lives. There most certainly is, and that natural process is called learning.

 

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