Techno-Lobotomy

I'm listening to this cd set loaned to me by a friend about what the brain is doing when we're busy socializing.  I have to listen to this one section again before I go on because it is so critical!  So, pardon me if I get a few details wrong.

The part of the brain that is wired to navigate through instant emotional climate change is an EXTREMELY sensitive and delicate instrument.  The slightest look or movement can trigger a powerful readiness to act before the higher reasoning is even ready to engage.  This has advantages and disadvantages, as we all know well. 

The reason I started this profile (my second, here on zaadz) is because when I tell people who know me that I'm going to be homeless in a few weeks, it is like dropping a bomb.  A shock-wave of triggering goes through the room faster than a blink and people usually don't think before they react.  Their reactions, in turn, trigger me to react - and I am trying to become more mindful about all this and more careful about what my part is in the traumatizing human drama that is poverty and mental illness. 

So, even if I tell one person at a time, I have no guarantee that they will contain their emotional response enough to give me room to really explore what is going on for me.  They usually cannot tolerate anything that sounds like defeat or negativity or hopelessness.  My guess is that that's because it triggers their own impulse to protect in a way that is overwhelming and their higher reasoning knows that they cannot afford to protect me as much as I "need" it.  So, instead of being able to contain their own impulse to protect and not react, they put the burden off onto me to not sound so needy.  This happens too fast for me to compensate for and regain my ground so I react to protect them from their own fear of their own impulse, and I start to pretend not to be so "negative".  The result is no one is being authentic, and everyone is pretending that it's not that bad.  This solves nothing.  When you put that scenario into a group context, then the reactions multiply at breakneck speed and I become totally overwhelmed. 

Lobotomies were performed on people who could not control or contain their emotional reactions and were so enslaved by them that they could not function in ordinary life - or, as was the case more than once - on people who's emotional reactions were simply inconvenient to the people around them who had power.  It is a surgery that separates parts of the brain in such a way that the part that detects and directs one through emotional spaces can no longer communicate with the part that does the higher reasoning.  Emotional reactivity disappeared.  But so did the detection of emotional interaction and the consideration of appropriate response.  Oops.  Sorry.

The guy who wrote this book on cd is saying that before technology got in the way, people always related to one another face to face and within hearing distance.  The emotional triggering system in the brain is set up to work within that environment.  So, ever since we've been interacting via the various technologies - all the way from smoke signals to Internet bulletin boards - our reactions to emotionally charged situations have been variously delayed or deleted.  We have become sheltered from or numb to news which previously had rallied people to protect, provide, nurture and care.  Television has taken advantage of this technological lobotomy by stepping in to trigger us only in ways that are convenient to their advertizers.  So, the same machine keeps triggering us to go get fast-food while it prevents us from being triggered to care about or feed a hungry stranger.  And eating a bacon cheezeburger is so much more satisfying than trying to figure out how much one can help vs. how much one can't help.  I know this by experience. 

So, while in one way this is a shame, in another way, this could actually be helpful.  I don't necessarily want my presence or story to trigger people.  I would prefer that we all slow down a minute and think about this more carefully so that we don't wreck the economy by trying to force it to carry a weight that it can't necessarily carry.  It really can't feed and house all the homeless.  I saw a website last night that said that there would be no homeless in New York (New York!!) if they were all allowed to live in the vacant buildings that exist in that city.  Wow!  That's alot of vacant buildings!  But slow down a minute and do the math. 

1 building owned privately can potentially bring in X amount of income. 
Each living unit given to a homeless person to live in reduces that potential exponentially because people capable of paying for living space will not want to be triggered by homeless people every time they walk to their front door and they will take their money elsewhere.
Very soon, that entire building will become a financial disaster for a private owner.

Okay, so the city buys the building. 
The govt. pays the cost of letting people live their rent free, or at a fraction of their meager income, and the cost of govt. goes up so high that normal infrastructure is no longer affordable. 
Such things as police, fire and emergency medical response systems, roads, sewage and waste management start to suffer from lack of funding. 
The quality of life goes down for everyone, while people who are not used to or are incapable of caring for their own property are letting the buildings deteriorate into a dangerous trap.
These same people buy TV's and their ability to care for their neighbors decreases even more. 

Is my little rough calculation too much high reasoning for our comfort?  Would some of us prefer that I not "do the math" but grow a heart instead?  Has choosing one over the other either way solved any problems at all?

Is anyone ready to try something else?  Explore different possibilities?  I need the help of this technology and this extra buffer of anonymity to slow things down and give everyone the chance to do just that.  Can you be mindful of your reactions and impulses when you read this?  Does the time delay give you more of a chance to bring in your higher thinking to solve problems?  Or are you using it simply to cut yourself off from people like me so you can focus on your own personal preferences and comforts? 

A month from now, I may be lying in order to eat.  Like an animal, I may be unwilling (or unable due to low blood sugar and/or lack of proper sleep and/or medication) to apply higher reasoning but instead resort to out and out emotional manipulation of anyone I think might possibly help me.  I wourld rather that not happen.  But it might.  And if this happens enough, my brain will set this as an automatic pattern which is rewarded by food and survival.  Will I be able to recover my higher standards once this level has been stooped to and reinforced?  Will those who prey on the weak, sense my internal divide, take advantage of it and manipulate me to feed their appetites? 

This morning I saw a zaadz quote from Emerson stating something about how we are created for wealth and property is a product of higher thought.  But now, as I'm searching through his quotes, I'm finding many which contradict that. 

"The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature; he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. The food which was not, he causes to be."

Then back again:

"Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms."

lol  And again:

"Nature hates calculators."

And again:

"Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well."

Ah!  Here it is:

"Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labor drives out brute labor."

Maybe I didn't have that quite right.  I guess he's saying that an integration of high reasoning with low impulses is what works.  But how is that an "intellectual production"?  Maybe that's what intellectual means to him.  And maybe this guess is too subtle, but maybe his idea of "brute labor" is not the joy that comes with putting his spade in the ground and working a vegetable bed, but forcing and being forced to do so by harsh manipulation or desperation. 

I guess you have to read all of him and keep him in the context of his day to keep it all straight, but I find this sort of division between views to be a huge problem. 

So maybe this one covers it all eventually:

"It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'Always do what you are afraid to do.'"

• Learn how to slow down reactions and contain your intense emotions.
• Learn how to do those things you suspect you can't do.
• Learn how to integrate those lower impulses into your whole being so that their existance doesn't terrorize you - either in yourself or others.
• Learn what it takes to survive in a nasty and brutish world so you know how to more effectively help the wretched.
• Learn where to help and where to stop helping.
• Learn to live without your TV (or its equivallent) and engage with real humans instead.