Friday, February 1, 2013

OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS: PROBLEMS IN OUR DIGITAL WORLD

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   

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