Dear Aesthetically-minded readers please read and respond to the following article: It touches on recent discoveries in cognitive science related to technology and dehumanization and pointing to the important role aesthetics can play in overcoming the loss of human interaction.
From
“Polyvagal Theory” by Dr. Stephen Porges, 6-20-12 Webinar for the
National
Institute for Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM):
"Well-developed human beings can self-regulate their emotional state by being with
other humans. But others don't have a clue what other humans are
thinking, which means their ability to regulate their physiological
state with other people is not good.
"What about people who
self-regulate their emotional state with objects?
We're in a world right now being literally pushed on us by people
who are challenged in their own social and emotional regulation –
and we're calling this social networking, such as Facebook. We're using computers,
we're texting -- we're stripping the human interaction from all
interactions. We're
going from a synchronous interactive world, to an a-synchronous model
where we leave messages and hope people get it. We're allowing the
world to be organized based upon the principles of individuals who
have difficulty regulating emotionally in the presence of other human
beings, but regulate well with objects.
"Many
of the clinical disorders being treated today are in people who have
difficulty regulating their emotional state with other humans, and
gravitate to regulating with objects. Whether we call it autistic,
social anxiety, or the internet, their nervous system does not enable
reciprocal social interaction to feel safe, so they can't get the
physiological and emotional benefits of well-regulated human-to-human
physiological states. Instead, now, healthy social behavior becomes
something which to them is disruptive.
"Individuals
can be led into either of these two different ways of interacting,
with others or with objects. Unfortunately today's changes in education are moving kids
away from face-to-face interaction, toward the goal of putting I-pads
in the hands of pre-school children. I saw a recent newscast of a
school which was so proud this, and the kids were all looking at
their IPADs. None of them were looking at each other.
"This means
their nervous systems don't have the opportunity to exercise the
neural regulatory circuits associated with healthy social engagement
emotional behavior. If they don't do that, their nervous system
doesn't develop the strength and resilience to self-regulate or
regulate with others when challenged. They're not getting vital
neural exercise.
"The schools also, under the pressure of our information-centric world
which wants to force feed kids with more information, without
realizing that our nervous system needs these positive physiological
states of face to face human interaction to promote creativity and
bold new ideas and positive social behavior. Rather than exercising
music, play, team sports, we say 'that's a distraction,' instead kids need to sit longer in the classroom.
"But what's happening is that
less information is actually getting in, and oppositional behaviors
are on the rise. If we don't utilize the neural regulation of certain
systems, they will not develop well. You can recruit them later, but
if you haven't recruited them early, there will be consequences. The
first thing to do is to create a context of safety, to convey that
the patient did not do anything wrong. Because if they think they
were in the wrong, it shuts down the human attunement neural circuits
which they need to respond..."
Regards,
Bill
