Darwinian and Freudian Cynicism

1
Darwinian and Freudian Cynicism

• Alexis Basaldu

2
Fondness for a friend may wane if his or her
status slips, or if it simply fails to rise as
much as our own.

• Popular by association (higher status individual
  is doing them a favor merely by allowing
  themselves to be associated)
• Because now have different goals (we need friends
  to be our allies)
• Why have friends if youre not getting enough out
  of the relationship?

3
Adaptation and Psychometric Evaluation of the
Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social
Support for Arab American Adolescents.

• 635 Arab-American youth in metropolitan Detroit
• Study influence of family, friends, and social
  personnel on daily hassles
• 7pt. scale

4
(No Transcript)
5
Inconclusive as to whether family or friends
offered more support for these immigrants in
early adolescence.Perceived support from
family, friends, and school personnel were
inversely related to self reports of daily
hassles and internalizing behavior and positively
related to assistance-seeking coping.
6
Freud

• Saw humans as animals
• Believed in the Lamarckian idea
• Keen eye for psychic tension
• Thantos
• Penis Envy
• Oedipal complex

7
Oedipal Complex

• Can be explained in Darwinian terms
• Especially in polygamous societies sons may
  compete with their fathers for women (not
  including his mother).
• At young age children fight with their father for
  the mothers attention (but not for sex).

8
Marriage SatisfactionStumbling on Happiness by
Daniel Gilbert
9
Father-Son Conflict

• Studies of adult twins
• raised together and
• apart have suggested
• that genetic factors
• account for 20-25 of
• the variance for twins perceptions of their
  rearing family and current family.
• Considerable power of children to affect the
  course of parent-child interaction.
• Participants were male twins and parents. 607
  families.

10
-Evidence for age differences in genetic and
environmental influences was primarily for the
father-son relationship.-Have yet to complete
study of female relationships with their parents.
11
Knobs and Tunings

• Cued by
• Social environment- Victorian era or secluded
  village?
• What you bring to the table
• Parents have a lot to say about childs emerging
  psyche

12
For Our Own Good.

• Trivers The tuning may be done by the parent to
  benefit the parent and not the child.
• Child may make sacrifices for the sake of the
  family.
• However, Reaching for a high status with limited
  abilities causes mental and physiological
  problems

13
Social Stressors, Mental Health, and
Physiological Stress in an Urban Elite of Young
Afghans in Kabul

• appraised social aspirations, everyday stressors,
  psychosocial distress, and mental health problems
  
• 161 students at Kabul University
• Kabul is still a volatile environment with
  markedly unequal opportunities for social
  advancement.
• The stated goal, in its local expression, is to
  serve family and society in finding positions
  seen to be honorable and provide a good, reliable
  wage.
• showed that mental health pertained to the
  quality of participants position in the
  community.

14

• Is pain something abnormal, a sign things have
  gone wrong?
• Randolph Nesse- Pain is part of natural
  selections design
• We were made able to absorb painful guidance, but
  how necessary is it for a productive life?

15
Why do we forget?

• Freud Sometimes the
• tendency to discard painful
• memories is successful and
• sometimes it isnt
• Evolutionary Psychologists
• Forget inconvenient facts for better arguer
• Remember what owed
• Remember humiliating events so wont repeat

16
Best of Freud

• The human mind is a place of conflict between
  animal impulses and social reality
• Paul MacLean 3 parts of human brain
• 1. Reptilian Core
• (basic drives)
• 2. Paleomammalian Brain (affection for offspring)
• 3. Neomammalian Brain (abstract reasoning)

17

• Freuds id contains basic drives and acts off
  of pleasure principle.
• ego unconscious that mediates the id and
  helps us to organize our thoughts.
• superego is the conscience and source of
  inhibition

18

• Repression and the unconscious mind are the
  product of millions of years of evolution and
  were well developed long before civilization
  further complicated mental life.

19
Postmodern Mind

• What is in our genes best interest seems
  rightmorally right, objectively right,
  whatever sort of rightness is in order.
• new Darwinism underscores that in human
  affairs, all (or at least much) is artifice, a
  self-serving manipulation of image.

20
Just sit back and enjoy the show.

• Not optimistic,
• Just doesnt take
• The ideals of modern cynicism seriously.
• Modern cynicism brought despair due to human
  inability to behave admirably.

21
Postmodern Art
22
Future of Darwinism

• One reasonable reaction to evolutionary
  psychology is a self-consciousness so acute, and
  a cynicism so deep, that ironic detachment may
  provide the only relief.
• After Darwinism takes root can the word moral
  be anything but a joke?