The Biological Base LO6119

Peter Pflaum (pflaump@internetMCI.com)
Wed, 13 Mar 1996 13:34:52 -0500 (EST)

This is posted to several lists. If there is a problem let me know and I
will fix it. I changed address and it may have caused a mix up. The idea
is that the biological basis of being human helps us understand ourselves
and others. Then we are in a better position to act wisely.

SYNERGY-NET on http://metro.turnpike.net/~pflaump

RE: Bio-politics, education and the Chemical-behavioral paradigm:
Domination and Liberation.

It is good practice to design organizational, political, educational,
training, and commercial activity with knowledge of the "newest" findings
of social psychology, and the most "ancient" methods of character
development. In times of change, it become necessary to think of ways to
promote "reprogrammed" individuals and systems. We are in the area of
great change as we move from industrial models of domination to
information systems and cooperation. Fundamental change is not so simple
and the evolution of culture has never been so fast. We need new
techniques to deal we this kind of challenge. There is no solution "inside
the box", we have to look beyond our culturally defined ruts.

Candace Pert, interviewed in Bill Moyers' "Healing and the Mind"
(Doubleday 1995 based on the PBS series) was Chief of Brain Bio- chemistry
at the NIH. She discovered new types of psychoactive drugs that are
produced by the brain, endorphins, which means "morphines from within",
that are similar to opiates taken as drugs.

The physical matter changes with personality. It goes both ways. " the
mind is not just in the brain but is part of a communications network
throughout the brain and body. You can start to see how physiology can
effect functioning on a moment- to-moment, hour-by-hour, day-today basis,
much more that we give it credit for." If people live in an industrial,
factory system, where domination, power, and control are the commanding
social conditions, they become physically different from people who work
and live in an information, learning organization. The workers of Detroit
have different bio-chemical systems than those of San Jose and the silicon
valley. Different groups of voters have different chemical reactions to
the symbols, sights and sounds of political messages.

As a neuroscientist Dr. Pert was `secretly' interested in consciousness
and became aware that the immune system produces a number psychosomatic
(psyche = mind, soma = body ) chemical transmitters. The internal
information system is a biochemical, electrical network. The messenger
peptides inform and stimulate cells to produce or not produce proteins,
divide or not divide, and the direct the roles of different sub-systems in
complex strategies of growth, protection, and mood. The fight-flight
(stress response) is only one of many sub-systems. (Herbert Benson)

Consciousness involves every cell of the body.

Try to get your "mind" around this concept. Thinking and awareness is NOT
a computer chip but a chemical soup, dynamic interactions on bio-chemical
networks, not programmed but conditioned by genes and the physical, social
environment. Genetic context is interactive with `ecological' emotional
and social states. Neuro-peptides and their receptors are emotions.

This new science opens doors to "body knowledge", intuition, and the deep
programming of socialization. Television and diet impact who we are.
Commercials, sex and violence, effect mood by way of organic chemistry.
Bio-politics speaks to the production of Neuro-transmitters.

The peptides are the material manifestation of the psyche and the "soul".
Anger, love, fear, awe, depression, joy, are physical and material body
reactions. Actors that play happy people have different blood chemistry
from actors that play angry people. Thinking makes it happen, body
chemistry effects our thinking. Psychol-therapy, or traditional education
maybe able to change our patterns of thought to produce new chemical
balances, but its very difficult and unlikely. But if drugs can change the
chemistry - bingo our own attitude changes.

"People with multiple personalities sometimes have extremely clear
physical symptoms that vary with each personality. One personality can be
allergic to cats while another is not. One personality can be diabetic and
another is not."

Neuro-peptides are the biochemical units of emotion. Emotions almost
always set the context for behavior. Perhaps, industrial and social
training need to take place with sets of conditions that produce the
responses needed. Construction, decoration and graphics, sights and
sounds, diet, motion, all can contribute. Maybe also "soma", drugs that
produce a sense of security, well- being and hope. This is the base of our
Sufi program.

The old systems of power and top-down authority (Male domination systems)
have become more and more dysfunctional. Public schools are the great
hold-outs of "communist", state bureaucracies that ignore market forces.
IBM, GM, and the other industrial giants are making way for smaller,
faster, more flexible cooperative systems of enterprise. The US congress
with it's domination by old men, committee chairmen, no longer works. Big
"communications" mega-media is coming apart at the edges.

SYNERGY-NET on http://metro.turnpike.net/~pflaump
** Peter E. Pflaum Ph.D. , Headmaster GLOBAL_VILLAGE_SCHOOLHOUSE
225 Robinson Road, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32169-2176 (904) 428-9609
pflaump@MSN.com pflaump@interserv.com
*****************************************************************

SYNERGY-NET on http://emporium.turnpike.net/~pflaump or
http://metro.turnpike.net/~pflaum pflaume@n-jcenter.com
** Peter E. Pflaum Ph.D. , Headmaster GLOBAL_VILLAGE_SCHOOLHOUSE
225 Robinson Road, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32169-2176 (904) 428-9609
pflaump@interserv.com
*****************************************************************

-- 

Peter Pflaum <pflaump@internetMCI.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>