In the Introduction to Relationships we asked four questions.
Here’s the relevant excerpt.
“For a long time now I’ve been struggling with the problem of the relation of our behaviors. How are our behaviors related to human behavior itself? Or, a slightly different way of putting it, What is the relationship with our individual behaviors to human behavior itself? An even deeper question could be, How do we relate those behaviors to the self that lies beneath them and is their ultimate source? And, finally, How do we bring those behaviors together in our attempt to shape a meaningful life?”
The idea is to keep our answers as short and to the point as possible. Obviously, we could elaborate further and will in a future entry. But, for now, the answers provided will serve.
1. How are our behaviors related to human behavior itself?
Our individual behavior is related to human behavior itself in two ways. Adaptation and Response.
Adaptation
All of our behaviors are related to human behavior in general through biological adaptation. Both the individual and the species must do two things. They must adapt to the world and they must make the world adapt to them if they are to survive.
In other words, whether we are acting in the interest of others (adapting to the world), or, acting in our own interest (adapting the world to ourselves). Though obviously both could be examples of self-interest, the difference here is one of emphasis.
This is another way of saying that the world is our Idea, and it is.
But, the world is also Reality, Actuality and Factuality.
We have to respond to the world, and when we do the world responds to us. But, it's not just what we do that counts. It's what happens to us in the doing (so, the more we know, the better).
Now this is not to say that our modes of adaptation are themselves adapative. Our adaptive behaviors may very well be maladatations. In fact, all adaptations eventually and inevitably become maladaptations, because those adapatations were created at a specific time and place to solve particular problems that no longer exist. Hence the clinging to outworns patterns of behavior.
This can be seen in its most stringent form in Sadomasochism, which reduces all human interaction to one of dominance and submission. Like what is happening now in the West, and not just the West, between the hostile elite and their host populations.
It can be seen in its most rigid and inflexible state in cultures of blind obedience to authority, which has a long history and unfortunately, seems to be making a return in the only place that ever made an attempt to transcend it - The West. For only in the geographical areas of Western Europe and North America (the land of whiteness) was there ever a large scale and considered effort to not merely transcend the culture of blind obedience to authority and replace it with a culture of individual conscience, but to also invert the four sanctions that sustain cultures of blind obedience - economic deprivation, imprisonment, torture and death. The inversions of those sanctions being economic ease, the privileges of freedom, respect for the individual, and the value of life itself (beyond the rule of the tyrant and the tyrant's mob).
Response
It's always the obvious that eludes us. And one very obvious fact is that we can not adapt to the world without responding it. But how does that response happen? What does it involve? The short answer is A lot. In fact, too much to go into here. Way too much.
But that shouldn't discourage us from trying to outline the basics.
Human Response - Sign Response - Sign Transfer.
Put simply, human beings respond to signs. The word sign refers to any figure preceptible against its ground. Sign subsumes verbal behavior, nonverbal behavior and objects. Sign Behavior involves the categorization of a configuration as a sign. As the world comes into our perceptual field, the world turns into signs.
From this point of view what verbal behavior does is obvious. Words give instructions to transfer a response to a sign that has no attributes in common with previously encountered signs.
A simple example can be found between parent and child.
When the parent shows the child their name in writing for the first time they will point to the written word and say in effect, Respond to the marks on this page as you have already learned to respond to the sound of your name. Since their name is quite literally a sign of the child, this moment between parent and child is generally a happy one. At least one is inclined to hope so. It's certainly an important moment. So it better be happy. If it isn't a happy one the fault lies with the parent, not the child. Of course!
In any event, a better example of the fact that parental judgments of competence and value on the one hand, and the child's sense of value and identity on the other, are intimately related would be impossible to imagine.
The point here is that sign transfer is the foundation of all learning. But, since the word sign is about semiotics and transfer leads to transformation, a more precise definition of human behavior than sign transfer would be semiotic transformation.
Again, we'll go into more detail in a future entry.
2. What is the relationship with our individual behaviors to human behavior itself?
Putting the question this way helps direct attention to the usefulness of making a further distinction between individual behavior and human behaivor. Why? Because theories of human behavior, derived from the dualism of Descartes and continued by Kant, invariably begin with the mind, or individual organism, as the basic building block of a theory of human behavior.
Psychology responded in the same way until the appearance of Family Systems, which simply applied the science of the mind to the study of the family, making the family the patient, not just the individual, who, not surprisingly, turns out to be the scapegoat.
We are now beginning to realize (though the change has been building since the 19th century) that this path taken by Descartes and Kant and continued by Philosophy and Psychology, of judging the individual as the basic building block of any theory of human behavior is a judgment made in error and that, rather, the basic building block is in fact sign response. Why is this important and what does it have to do with question number 2?
Because it helps us see the invididual for what it is - a rag bag of behavioral bits held together by a mental construct. It helps us see that the individual is a persistent semoitic transformation.
And exactly why the individual needs to hold themselves together by a mental construct is made clear by an understanding of the primary attrbute of the human brain - randomness of response.
To be justifiably reductive, if everything is reducible to genes and culture, and the human brain's primary genetic attribute is randomness, then the cultural response of human beings must be to limit the range of behavior, but to also be flexible enough to not permit that limitation to inhibit human adaptational behavior.
With this we're now ready to offer a short answer to the question.
What is the relationship between individual behaviors and human behavior itself?
The basic relationship between individual behavior and human behavior itself is a semiotic relation made necessary by the primary attribute of the human brain - randomness of response and the corresponding need to limit the range of behavior.
Since humans have no choice but to control the brain's randomess and since the only way to do this is by sign response, the two aspects of all human behavior are randomness and semiosis.
Semiotic Behavior controls the brain's Randomness of Response.
Each individual responds to that randomnes in unique ways. But all human beings control that randomness by responding to signs.
They must control that randomness of the human brain enough to avoid schizophrenia (a million responses to one sign) and flexible enough to avoid psychosis (one response to a million signs).
We are rag bags of behavioral bits. And our responses to that randomness is the only thing that gives our lives any continuity.
And what we respond to are signs. Each of us responding to the world of signs in our own way. Hence the value of our motto
And that continuity is a consequence of our ability to make reasonable decisions. But we don't do this all by ourselves.
And now we're back to our parent and child mentioned earlier in relation to learning and the sense of value and identity. We are a We before we're an I. After all, we don't give birth to ourselves.
Because of the randomness of the human brain, and because each individual responds to that randomness in unique ways, controls must be set over behavior. Those controls set over behavior by culture are social institutions, of which there are five, teaching-learning, value, economic, governmental and idea institutions.
And the primary social institution is the family, which has been the most basic bio-social unit since at least the Paleolithic Age.
It is where the individual is first socialized by learning the sense of value and identity and the relation between competence and value. It's where they are supposed to learn that they matter. That way they're better prepraed to enter later in the other institutions.
This is why abusive, dysfunctional families are so devastating for the individuals in them and ultimately for the culture itself.
The explanation for this is that, since the child needs parental models competent in making decisions, the decision-making ability itself can be and often is severely damaged as a result of abandonment, rejection, abuse and neglect and the tension, disorientation and disturbance they cause in the individual.
In short, brain trauma. Severe and long-term brain trauma. If not diagnosed and treated the symptoms can last a lifetime. In fact, whether treated or not they do last a lifetime (though treatment is obviously a considerable improvement over ignoring the problem or making it worse by victim-blaming, and some people do get better, though only after diagnosis, treatment and loving support).
The rest simply live out their lives with an undiagnosed illness. This is especially true of neglectful parents and abusive siblings, both of whom go to their deathbed never knowing who they are.
In any event, that multigenerational dysfunction has fueled our current cultural crisis is perfectly obvious to anyone who moves through the world with eyes open. That being the case, one is inclined to raise serious doubts about social reformers who go out of their way to avoid talking about the family’s impact on society!
All of this goes a long way to explaining why, not just dysfunctional famliies, but entire cultures and countries, are so scapegoat-dependent. They're literally addicted to scapegoating.
Note: They're not saying Black Families Matter for a reason. First, because BLM though fronted by blacks was not organized by them anymore than The NAACP was. Second, if people organized around the family in general and nonelite families in particular (white or black) they could rebuild the country and go after the hostile elite. Which is what they should be doing anyway. Until that happy day, however, not just Americans but the entire Western world will continue to be victimized by the hostile elite's agenda of Full Spectrum Dominance through Divide and Conquer.
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