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  • Peter Critchley

Nature via Nurture


Nature via nurture

Beyond nature vs nurture, innatism vs culturalism.

Predisposition is not predetermination.

Social epigenetics = predispositions plus dispositions in the right environment = the 'happy' habitat. 'Happy' in the sense of eudaimonia = flourishing, the realisation of healthy potentials.

Owen Flanagan is worth checking out on eudaimonics.

Biology + social, political and economic factors.

It's about establishing good quality relations with other people, reciprocity, mutuality, empathy, trust, cooperation = emotional and cognitive development.

The one contains the many and the many contains the one. You can't understand anything in isolation from its environment.

Human development has a social nature.

The biology of human beings depends upon their interaction with the social and pyschological environment.

Interpersonal neuro-biology = the way our nervous system functions depends on our personal relationships.

http://www.filmsforaction.org/…/this-video-dispels-every-n…/

There are good habits and there are bad habits. The bad habits have us addicted to all kinds of bad things, the good habits have us expressing our healthy potentials for growth.

Max Weber characterised capitalist modernity as an 'iron cage', a psychic prison that embraces our very subjectivities. We do not see the bars on our cage. The difference between not being addicted and being addicted is the difference between seeing the world as your park and seeing the world as your cage.

"When I talk to addicted people, whether they are addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, Internet use, sex, or anything else, I encounter human beings who really do not have a viable social or cultural life. They use their addictions as a way of coping with their dislocation: as an escape, a pain killer, or a kind of substitute for a full life. More and more psychologists and psychiatrists are reporting similar observations. Maybe our fragmented, mobile, ever-changing modern society has produced social and cultural isolation in very large numbers of people, even though their cages are invisible!"

http://www.brucekalexander.com/…/148-addiction-the-view-fro…

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