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2005
The world according to my neurons
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The phone rang and out of habit, guilt or bashfulness, I mouse-clicked to
close what I was doing and launched the Yahoo Mail page. Even while I gave
my attention to the caller, I could still see the screen from the corner
of my eye .... as a big black cock emerged.
Whoa! Why is there an erect cock on Yahoo? * * * * * I am now the happy owner of a camera phone. It has taken a while, but as I was so comfortable with the old phone, I was reluctant to retire it. For a number of reasons, I finally did so, but I must confess -- which is not a surprise as these things go -- I have hardly begun to explore the many new features and functions available on the newbie. I am using it very much like I was using the old phone. In fact, it was frustrating enough re-learning how to do the basic stuff, it didn't seem worth the additional trouble to figure out what the other buttons did. (And I know I'm not alone in this; many a reader is suppressing a guilty chuckle at this very moment.) Truth be told, even with respect to the camera feature, which was why I wanted the new model in the first place, I have taken a grand total of 4 pictures in the month that I have had it. This dismal lack of ambition bothered my friend Joey much more than it bothered me. Joey kept on suggesting things that I could do with the new, feature-packed device. Half the time I didn't even know what he was talking about. One day, he hinted that I could (and should) personalise my wallpaper – that's the background image on the screen, for those of you who are even more distant from the frontlines of technology than I am. Or was he referring to the screen-saver? You see, I wasn't paying any attention to his persuasions. Joey is indefatigable. To interest me in the possibilities of imaging, he sent me an email with 11 images attached. These were phone-camera photos taken by and merrily swapped among Japanese youths, he said. It's the latest fad. Perhaps I might wish to do something likewise? No chance!
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The reason is clear from the 4 sample
images on the right. There is absolutely no way I'm going to do something
like that; I'm much too old-fashioned.
Nonetheless, one has to admit these are, despite being very strange or maybe even repulsive at first look, rather arresting pictures. I was ever so grateful for the pleasure of viewing them, even as I declined emulation. And view them I did. Closely. What I found most striking were the camera angles these young men chose. They were extremely dramatic, and conveyed the point of the pictures very clearly. The second most notable characteristic was that in 9 out of the 11 pictures that Joey sent me, the faces of the young men were clearly visible (though I have blacked out the faces in the samples on this page). The fad seemed not to be merely passing around pictures of your cock, but of identifying yourself with the meat. There is some heavy psychology begging to be explained here, which my mind didn't want to bother with, preoccupied as it was with shallow, voyeuristic thrill. The third thing my eye found fascinating was the lighting and the relative balance of exposure between the cocks and the faces. The lighting angle in the third picture was particularly pleasing (though the fan was most distracting). The good results are probably just fluke, even if Joey must have chosen the better ones to send to me. Finally, I was quite taken in by the way the hair of the guy (in a school uniform, no less!) in the second picture echoed his straight-up dick, in a way that suggested shock. It had unintended humour! So there I was, scrutinising the 11 pictures, all of them with disproportionately large penises, when the phone rang -- the new phone, which I was expected to do more with. Unconsciously, even though I was alone in my home, my finger reached for the mouse, and closed the picture window, as if I had to hide away the dirty pictures when the caller came on. (More psychology begging to be explained here, but we'll leave it for another day.)
Meaning to thank Joey for the pictures via email, I launched Yahoo Mail while I took up the call. And that was when, with unaccustomed and certainly misplaced offence, I saw an erect dick emerge on Yahoo. A thick black one, with a dick-head pointing skywards as in the Japanese pictures. What is a raging penis doing on the "family-friendly" Yahoo site? Has the world gone cock-crazy? I absolutely had to turn my head to take a closer look... and it was a full two seconds before I realised that it was none other than Darth Vader. Two seconds is a very long time.
It's a funny thing, our brains. By so intently scrutinising penises, I tuned it to that particular part of the human anatomy, such that when something else of a roughly similar outline came into view, the part of my brain that interprets what I see continued to interpret it as yet another penis. It took a general uprising from other parts of my cortex protesting, shouting, beating on saucepans, megaphoning that nothing else made sense -- not the fact that I had closed the Japanese picture folder, not the fact that I should now be in Yahoo, not the fact that Japanese cocks aren't black -- before the acquired habit of interpreting what I saw as dick could be shaken loose. Two whole seconds. As they say, we see what we want to see. * * * * * Earlier this month, there was a story in the New York Times about how different people react differently to pheromones. These are sex-related chemicals found in sweat, and which seems to cause the hypothalamus of those who sniff them to light up with activity, with one very interesting difference the hypothalamuses of straight men do not respond to pheromones of other men, only to those from women, while for straight women, vice versa. Gay men's hypothalamuses on the other hand, respond to sex pheromones of other men. Another report of this study included the tidbit that women responded positively to straight men's pheromones, but adversely to gay men's pheromones. This is quite startling, as it suggests -- for the first time, I think -- that straight and gay men have distinguishable pheromones. The researchers had included lesbian women in their study, but other than saying that the results were "somewhat complicated", little else was revealed. Thus, who we are attracted to, whether you call it a surrender to lust or the appreciation of beauty, may be at least partly a consequence of what chemical soup gets into our nostrils and which brains cells fire in response. Poets may wax lyrical about the wondrous mystery of love, but the truth lies somewhere between my armpit and your schnozzle. * * * * * Nor is it just sexual attraction. Falling in love too is a neurological phenomenon. And like it or not, it has to do with getting sex. Another study a few years ago -- go google for the details if you wish to find out more -- reported that after a satisfying session of sex, more particularly, after orgasm, a flood of hormones and other chemicals wash into the brain. There is a burst of neuron growth, making new connections between visual recognition of the partner, memory and emotions. Well, well, I thought that was an inspired piece of work, because it explained my observations of myself. All it took was one night of good sex with someone and for the rest of my life I will always have a soft spot for him. There is a degree of tenderness and affection for these select guys that I cannot easily summon up for others. As someone said, very memorably, our brain is our biggest sex organ. * * * * * Now, "mirror neurons". Our feelings and emotions are each a pattern of activated neurons in the relevant parts of our brain. These neurons have connections to our visual cortex or to a sense of where our limbs are, or to memories of specific events in the past, such that the emotions are associated with certain things we see, postures of the body and circumstances. When we encounter the same situation (e.g. seeing yet another photograph of that son-of-a-bitch who two-timed you), the same pattern of neurons fire up and we feel the same emotions all over again. But we can also feel the hurt in someone else, when we see that other person in an analogous situation. We have empathy. How does that feeling arise? After all, there is no photograph of that son-of-a-bitch before our own eyes. It turns out from recent research that our brains have cells called "mirror neurons" which are triggered when we see or hear other people in situations that we can identify with. These mirror neurons mimic the emotional patterns which our own experiences have caused us to wire up in our brains. The result is that when our visual and aural senses detect associations that are analogous to what we have experienced, we can feel what the other party is feeling just by watching or hearing him, though we ourselves aren't directly engaged in his situation. Empathy now has a neurological explanation. For more, see the article A mirror to the world. * * * * * Many people have been brought up to think that the natural (in the sense of existing in nature, organic to our physical bodies, and ultimately a function of cells, wiring and the ebb and flow of chemical flushes) stands in opposition to our humanity. They think, even if they never quite so articulate it, that there is a distinction between behaviour that is rooted in our physical and biological selves (considered primitive, animalistic) and that which is abstract and a product of will, intellect and religious devotion (thus elevated and pure). This is reinforced by a cultural predisposition, especially in monotheistic religions to see God as outside of and above (thus superior to) the worldly world. It gets more explicit when scriptures say we're made in the image of God, or that piety and godliness require a repudiation of one's natural desires. This injunction then has the effect of branding nature as contaminating and lowly. People with such mindsets resist any inquiry into how even complex behaviours have come about through biological processes, and how these processes themselves emerged through eons of evolution. Such knowledge threatens their construction of the universe, by debasing their God and the cosmos that their God "created". * * * * * This article talked about sexual attraction, love and empathy. Altruism in the absence of heaven talked about how altruism can have an evolutionary explanation. Other researchers are at work asking how and why humans invented the concept of a God. If you believe in a God, you may take umbrage at the last one for it may well be the ultimate insult. But I'm not so sure. I do think that understanding ourselves is important and in the end, affirming, and we should not fear the marvel of knowing how the universe works. Our gods have grown with us, from petty, spiteful spirits to larger, wiser inspirations. Our shamans who once extracted demons from possessed souls have grown into Mother Theresas, who see good in every soul. If our faith is so simplistic that it cannot
withstand enquiry then it is a sham. It is like cartoon characters falling
in love compared to the real thing when our heads are swimming, hearts
pounding, eyes agog and generosity overflowing. When for all the riot of
emotions in and around us, the world is beautiful and at peace. If that is
biology, then Hallelujah Biology! © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes None Addenda None
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