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RichardLeach — Processes
Published: 2012-09-26 01:00:10 +0000 UTC; Views: 1133; Favourites: 40; Downloads: 0
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Paper collage on cardboard, about 7.5 x 5.25 inches.Kindly featured by lauratringaliholmes.deviantart… and VicEberly Feature: Mixed Bag 21
Serene Drizzle by artistwilder Anxietas Architectra by veinsofmercury
I Promise I Will Be Your Friend Forever by LUCILALEYLA
portrait by m-lucia September 26 by RichardLeach 66 by geissa
Passing Through by lesley-oldaker cosmic notion... by shotsfiredimagedown To Decay by TaNgeriNegreeN1986
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Comments: 33
I think the 'social machine' is hard wired into us; at least I believe that is what a hard core sociobiologist would say. We seem to be so limited in the ways we can react, as a mass, to social forces. I despair of any positive change.
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I've been feeling that way myself lately, trying to talk myself out of it, and not doing great with that. I did read a book last year about how people are hard wired for kindness as well as for less good stuff. But individuals and groups can choose against it.
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bonobo or chimp? By Franz de Wahl's research I think we look much more like the chimp. Aggressive. Territorial. Unable to see much beyond our own gene pools. But I do not discount your contention that we are capable of enormous sacrifice for a greater good. I just fear that the critical masses of human population we have achieved are to great to be moved by mere random acts of kindness. Hope I am wrong.
Below, if your interested, a reprinted article by Delancey Place about the effects of oxytocin on human behavior.
Keep piecing the puzzle together.
In today's excerpt - the hormone oxytocin may be the key to understanding moral behavior:
"Oxytocin is known primarily as a female reproductive hormone. ... Oxytocin controls contractions during labor, which is where many women encounter it as Pitocin, the commercially available synthetic version doctors inject in expectant mothers to induce delivery. Oxytocin is also responsible for the calm, focused attention mothers relish on their babies while breast-feeding. ... Oxytocin is well represented-we hope-on wedding nights, because it helps create the warm glow both women and men feel during sex, or a massage, or even a hug. ...
"My research had demonstrated that [oxytocin] both in the brain and in the blood is, in fact, the key to moral behavior. Not just in our intimate relationships, but also in our business dealings, in politics, in society at large.
"Which is a point, I realize, that might take some getting used to.
"Am I actually saying that a single molecule - and, by the way, a chemical substance that scientists like me can manipulate in the lab - accounts for why some people give freely of themselves and others are coldhearted bastards, why some people cheat and steal and others you can trust with your life, why some husbands are more faithful than others, and, by the way, why women tend to be more generous-and nicer-than men?
"In a word, yes.
"Beginning in 2001, my colleagues and I conducted a number of experiments showing that when someone's level of oxytocin goes up, he or she responds more generously and caringly, even with complete strangers. As a benchmark for measuring behavior, we relied on the willingness of the people being tested to share real money in real time. To measure the increase in oxytocin, we took their blood and analyzed it.
"Money, as everybody knows, comes in conveniently measurable units-nickels and dimes, tens and twenties-which meant that we were able to quantify the increase in generosity by the amount someone was willing to share. We were then able to correlate these numbers with the increase in oxytocin found in the blood. Later, to be absolutely certain that what we were seeing was not just an association but true cause and effect, we infused synthetic oxytocin into our study subjects' nasal passages-the next best thing to shooting it directly into their brains. As for cause and effect, we found that we could turn the behavioral response on and off like a garden hose.
"But what our work demonstrated first and foremost is that you don't need to shoot a chemical up someone's nose, or have sex with them, or even give them a hug in order to create the surge in oxytocin that leads to more generous behavior. Fortunately, all you have to do to trigger this Moral Molecule is give someone a sign of trust. When one person extends himself to another in a trusting way, the person being trusted experiences a surge in oxytocin that makes her less likely to hold back, and less likely to cheat. Which is another way of saying that the feeling of being trusted makes a person more ... trustworthy. Which, over time, makes other people more inclined to trust, which in turn ...
"If you detect the makings of an endless loop here that can feed back onto itself, creating what might be called a virtuous cycle-and ultimately a virtuous society-you're getting the idea. And that's what's so incredibly exciting about this research.
"Obviously there's more to it, because no one chemical in the body functions all alone, and other factors from a person's life experience play a role as well. But as we'll see in the chapters ahead, oxytocin orchestrates the kind of generous and caring behavior that every culture, everywhere in the world, endorses as the right way to live, the cooperative, benign, pro-social way of living that every culture everywhere on the planet describes as 'moral.'
"Which is not to say that oxytocin always makes us good, or always generous and trusting. In a rough-and-tumble world, unwavering openness and loving kindness would be like going around with a KICK ME sign on your back. Instead, the Moral Molecule works like a gyroscope, helping us maintain our balance between behavior based on trust, and behavior based on wariness and distrust. In this way oxytocin helps us navigate between the social benefits of openness-which are considerable-and the reasonable caution we need to avoid being taken for a ride."
Author: Paul J. Zak
Title: The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity
Publisher: Dutton, a member of Penguin Group
Date: Copyright 2012 by Paul J. Zak
Pages: x-xii
The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity
by Paul J. Zak by Dutton Adult
Hardcover ~ Release Date: 2012-05-10
If you wish to read further: Buy Now
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Thanks, Greg! Really glad to have read that.
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I had no doubt that you were driven in thar process of creating collages!
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Thanks. It's amazing to me how these eventually cohere when I approach them - erm - by internal cylinder ignition!
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collages seem to have a mind of their own especially in thumbs!
but no gun
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I think all of us are a bit confused by the universe, I sympathise with this human.
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It's funny, that face is a fashion model from an advertisement - but her expression makes more sense in this collage than in the ad.
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It certainly makes plenty of sense here.
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the process starts linear and then gets free in curves. like so many others.
i love it, specially the colors.
you rarely do this format, horizontal, no?
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thanks very much!
and that's right, i almost always do vertical - probably it's unconscious allegiance to the printed-page format. this one was spontaneous last night, i just looked at scraps that were lying there and did it.
oh and thank you for some of the scrap - inside of one your envelopes and that word "spin" on the right hand side there - don't know what that means to the Lebanese postal system but i liked it
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lol, it's part of "Spinneys" a chain of big supermakets in lebanon, where you can find a small post "point". i go there because it's much less crouded than the official post office 
i wouldn't have figured that if i haven't read it on your 249 collage, in arabic
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thanks. i love knowing my scraps even though it doesn't matter to the final viewers of the piece
and good i posted that other one first
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yes, me too, it would have been too frustrating and i would have never guessed
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in the thumb I saw a panda bent under the weight of a canon
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wow - I can see that. it was unplanned of course - it's amazing what's turning up in this piece as various people look at it.
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Each time I view this, I can't get past a mental image of this: [link] . The partial portrait of the woman with a blank expression adds tension for me. And the portion above the "barrel" reminds me of a Saharan landscape. For me this is a powerful piece.
When you are creating a collage such as this, Richard, do you have some idea regarding the direction in which you are heading? A general concept? Or do you normally simply "play" with elements in a free-form manner and work more from the subconscious than the conscious? (Not that one method is necessarily better than the other. I'm simply curious about your mode of work.)
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Thanks very much, Vic. And wow, yeah, I see the visual echo of the machine gun.
It's the latter method - intuitive, no direction or plan in mind, and usually consciously avoiding making pictures - a graphic rather than pictorial approach. Sometimes as I go I will analyze what I've done and add elements for balance and rhythm.
One of my inspirations, ~fredfree (who is not here now but on facebook and his own site), glues each piece down before choosing another. I almost never do that - I get all the pieces where I want them and then glue.
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both technological and social machines are made by people - but we do forget this is so.
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