Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind
My opinion:
Seeing that this is a top 10 list, I cannot condemn the article itself for not being thorough enough. I can , however, discuss what I think are important things for scientists to learn about the brain.
It would be a great thing for society as a whole, if scientists could determine for sure where animal instinct and morality cross each other in the brain. Why does the animal inside each of us subside to our individual morals? What makes a person go from thought to action when they know the action is illegal and immoral?
What makes a pedophile, rapist, murderer, or abuser? How can some people grow up in the same environment as another and the two end up as polar opposites? I say it is not only the brain. It is the trauma the brain may suffer during gestation and birth. It is the way each person an individual meets effects them. It is the emotional, physical, and/or sexual traumas the person may have suffered throughout life. It is also the chemical makeup of the person, their heritage, their genes.
In the movie “Minority Report”, people where arrested on the basis that they were seen by precognitive’s committing a crime. I think the idea is a good one, yet not realistic in our day. Now if scientists can examine a persons DNA or do a brain map to see how the brain is functioning, then determine from that the likelihood of that person becoming/being a violent person, it would be possible to invent treatments that could prevent the crimes from ever happening.
There are many questions when it comes to how the brain and mind work. I believe that some things are more important to figure out than what dreams are made of.
2007 © L.J.B.
Subscribing to a social framework of values is beneficial to the individual. It pays more to be just like everyone else wants you to be.
1. Necessity. Real or perceived lack of something vital.
2. Fun factor. Excitement of breaking rules.
3. Higher truth. Belief that what one is doing is worth the penalty associated with crime.
Pedophile. Genetic. Just like being gay.
Rapist. A series of negative experiences with women or a series of experiences devaluing women.
Murderer. Too many reasons.
Abuser. Either a mental problem with the abuser or the subservience of the victim. There’s a certain appeal to pushing someone just to see how far they would go.
Humans are genetically and emotionally too diverse for the environment to have only a single effect.
Doesn’t seem likely. Brain damage is too blunt to have such precise effects.
It is my opinion that this part of the equation has been seriously overlooked by a lot of psychologists.
We’d also be turning all our great future artists into mush. Pretty much all great art that I know of has its roots in some sort of violent, repressed urges. All our greatest fiction, film, music, etc.
Crime prevention isn’t worth losing all that.
Thank you, Elver, for taking the time to read my blog.
I am of the opinion that you are being too simplistic in your answers to my questions. I don’t think is it that easy. I do, however, agree that it would be a shame to lose our artists. Doing a brain map or scanning the brain would not have any effect on the individual’s tendency towards certain feelings. They are both non-invasive and change nothing within the brain.
As for your last comment, I think the life of a person is more important than a poem, painting, or film. I think being educated about the processes of which I am speaking would be beneficial to you. They, by no means, turn a person’s brain into mush.
No, but you were referring go treatments and if you take away a person’s violent urges, then that’s treatment and that will have an effect on his/her creativity.
As for simplicity, then I’m willing to defend all my positions if you’re able to challenge them
If you would like to post your “defense”, please feel free. I haven’t the emotion necessary to argue back and forth on the subject though. I prefer to argue over things I have an emotional connection to.
Anyway, you need not defend your opinion at all. You are entitled to any opinion, just as I am entitled to mine.
Thank you for commenting, no matter what you chose to do.
People are entitled to informed opinions, not just opinions. Or in other words, if an opinion is not based on reality, it’s not an opinion. It’s a figment of their imagination.
After all these comments I had to look at your blog. I can see why you have a need to be right, therefore are argumentative. I am not judging and I am not saying I am perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I have known people with the same personality you display on your blog. (My sister be one.) I refuse to argue with her and I hold you no higher in status so I refuse to argue with you, Elver.
To everyone else who has had the patience to read these comments, I hope that you read my other posts and feel like you can make any sort of comment you wish to. I won’t delete any comments unless they are demeaning, abusive, or not relevant to the post.