| Author | Message | ||
     Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.54.245 |
Titles of films or stories/novels with he/she in please and thoughts on such. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
Even Shemales Get the Blues. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
Annie: shit. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.54.245 |
Tomorrow - sensible answers on a postcard please - no boy shit allowed. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.211.103.83 |
Obviously there's The Omen. And Ringu. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.191.194 |
There's always The Bad Seed. And Village of the Damned, The Other, Bava's Shock, Juon ... must be dozens of them. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.54.245 |
Yes, Steve- the first one that came to mind this week was The Omen and Huw - The Village of the Damned. Adrift - a little from the topic - I've spent more time thinking about Sylvia Plath, her son dying this week, than other topics in the press. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
I don't understand this thread at all...Ally, what does your question mean? The Omen doesen't have he or she in the title. Nor does Village of the Damned. What am I missing here? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
She means 'enfant terrible'. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.238.253 |
Zed, I didn't get that either, but reading back I think it's films about 'enfants terribles'. Not in the title but in the film. Yes? There's the SOUTH PARK movie. And THE INNOCENTS of course. And that rather overblown film about mother-son incest and murder in a rich American family, which came out a couple of years ago. Based on a true story, but it rather wallowed in decadent atmosphere and lacked insight and meaning. Kind of sub-Tennessee Williams, all the sleazy events but none of the intelligence or poetry. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.185.81 |
I wasn't sure either, but guessed that Ally wanted titles of films or books that feature 'bad' children (not really what the original French term means, of course). | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
Thanks for the translation, Joel and Huw.  Novel: "Let's Go Play at the Adams'". Film: Larry Parks' "Kids". | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.50.17 |
I was just asking for films/novels with l'enfant terrible in them and was in a rush. It doesn't matter now. As we have said before the board could benefit from an edit button :>) | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.185.81 |
Dennis the Menace?  | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.50.17 |
Over time I think that the use of it has changed from the original meaning Huw but it doesn't matter. I've moved on from what I was thinking on the subject anyway. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
THEM, of course. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.185.81 |
Nothing to do with the thread, but Ally - did you manage to find Jean Ray's story 'The Mainz Psalter'? I read it again last night, and I think you would like it (I know you love sea stories). It's a heck of a tale that reads somewhat like a cross between Hoffmann, Hodgson and Lovecraft. Ray's 'The Shadowy Street' (aka 'The Tenebrous Alley') is possibly even better. It's a shame neither seem to be included in Ex Occidente's forthcoming collection. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.50.17 |
Thanks for the suggestions. I honestly had no idea what I was reaching for in a story then Zed mentioned Let's Go Play at the Adams, which led me to thinking about Lord of the Flies and I know where it is going now. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.50.17 |
Sorry Huw I wandered off and didn't see your post then. Haven't read it yet but will try to get hold of it. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
'The Destructors' by Graham Greene. And BRIGHTON ROCK by same, of course. It's a difficult theme. There are disturbed children and there are child gangs with adult-derived destructive agendas. Children can do terrible things, but they don't do them because they are children or because they are innately evil. Many violent adults use films about 'demonic children' as part of their justification to batter children for misbehaviour, on the grounds that it's good for them and they are punishing the sin, not the sinner. All the child learns from that is that hurting people who can't defend themselves is good and that the good people are those who beat up children. Robbie Williams called Geri Halliwell a demonic child. But she was 26 at the time. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.50.17 |
Thanks Joel. I'm exploring themes where it just wouldn't take much for society to degenerate and bring out the worst in people, adult and child. The primitive beneath the surface, more the ignoble savage which is mentioned in the following quote from Stanley Kubrick. "Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved — that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure. ” | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
That's an interesting, if rather jaundiced, quote. I think folk like Stephen Pinker have a much better understanding of this issue. Check out his book The Blank Slate. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
As someone here said recently - Proto, I think - it's all too easy to dismiss the whole race as inevitably doomed according to a single, reductive, intra-psychic dimension. Trendy and cool, even. But ultimately foolish. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I relate to that quote, especially this bit: "He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved" I've been saying the same thing for years. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
"Trendy and cool, even. But ultimately foolish." I disagree. Sometimes simple is correct. The longer I live the more I realise there's little that's complicated about mankind. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
>>>there's little that's complicated about mankind Is this a symptom of alienation? | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
Devil children books TM Wright's Strange Seed series. Raymond Feist's Faerie tale - that's fairy changelings, don't know if that counts. TV - Family Guy Films - tHE Omen - which does have HE in the title. Eden Lake (apparently - I've not caught up with that one yet) Joel - were you just saying that "bad children" films are partly to blame for violence against children, or just that the scummy adults too cowardly to attack someone their own size try to use them as justification? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Is this a symptom of alienation? It may well be, mate. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
I feel that one part of Kubrick's quotation is true, if only because it sounds unwittingly self-referential: >>>unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
Zed, you should look at Pinker's work: he acknowledges the "irrational, brutal, weak, silly" nature of people and yet shows how this is never deterministic, and hints towards how social instiutions might be organised on the basis of such a 'realistic' view of human nature. He would certainly agree with Kubrick here: "And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure." But he wouldn't, as Kubrick seems to (in this quotation at least), rule out "noble" change. | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.3 |
Kill Baby Kill, Children of the Corn, It's Alive...as for stories, one for all, Ramsey's "Eyes of Childhood" | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.3 |
...and, missing in Jean Ray's collection, as I seem to notice from the table of contents, is the tale "Starkhaus" (House of the Stork), one of his creepiest! Pity! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Weber, it's mostly just a justification – but not a retrospective excuse in the face of prosecution, more an active justification that helps to reinforce the behaviour. Which is why films about devil children are unhealthy and should not be encouraged, just as films that equate female sexuality with evil (like BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW) should not be encouraged. They don't have to be banned, they should just be recognised as films that tell pernicious lies to gain an audience. Horror fiction doesn't need to tell lies about people: the truth is scary enough. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
I'm echoing some of Ramsey's past comments on cinema here. Not for the first time. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.50.17 |
Some interesting comments for me to think about there and not least the whole nature versus nurture argument. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
There is no debate. We inherit the inclination and ability to breathe. That's it. We have to be taught how to feed ourselves. People cannot work out for themselves how to make babies. The idea that we inherit complex behaviour traits, as opposed to learning them, is idiotic nonsense. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Yes, behaviour traits run in families. I wonder fucking why. Small children are good learners. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Jeremy Hardy has this great routine about the English kid adopted as a baby and brought up in Borneo, waking up one morning in the rain forest and saying "I don't know why, but I really fancy a cucumber sandwich." He's making the point that such notions of how people develop run counter to all our experience and reason. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
That's the kind of 'blank slate' either/or thinking that Pinker is contesting. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Yeah, but he's wrong. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
Other than claiming that either view is based on an article of politically oriented faith, then we have to review what evidence exists. Pinker draws upon a lot of it, all of which, in my view, renders his perspective worth listening to. I don't think he's wholly right, but I don't think he's wholly wrong, either. For what it's worth, I don't personally think people are born 'tabula rasa'. That leads to tensions in my existentialist leanings, but Pinker's work has allowed me to really think through these tensions in a new and refreshing way. Worth taking a look at, at the very least. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
We are definitely hard-coded with certain behavioural traits. Others are learned. Sexual preference is a definite hard-coded trait. "We have to be taught how to feed ourselves". Not true. We are born with the ability to suckle - a feat which is extremely complicated for such an undeveloped mind, needing the co-ordination of dozens of muscles. As our teeth grow, we don't need to be encouraged to start on solid food. eating tidily is the learned behaviour where sustenance is concerned. Look at the examples of identical twins separated at birth and brought up in different family backgrounds. They - almost without exception - have extremely similar character traits, sexual preference etc. They frequently marry partners with identical hair colour and build. I'd be very interested to meet a pair of identical twins where one was gay and one straight. We are a mix of nature and nurture. Some people are more academic or more sporting or musical than others, that tends to be hard coded rather than learned. Of course some natural traits can be amended by nurture. eg A hard-coded trait such as tendency to aggression can be tamed by learning and discipline etc. IMHO | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
Well, when you start using words like "definitely", I start to wobble slightly. It sounds far too much like determinism. I prefer the notion of 'behavioural trends' - a bandwidth of behavioural potentiality, as it were, woven into the body-subject alongside a multitude of social cues. This shouldn't be focused solely on intra-psychic factors, either: it should embrace being-in-the-world - meaning-making, etc. The interaction/engagement of a person in the lived world. Neither deterministic nor entirely free. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
I', with GF on this one. Big style. It's Both/And, innit? | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
>> Which is why films about devil children are unhealthy and should not be encouraged, just as films that equate female sexuality with evil (like BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW) should not be encouraged. They don't have to be banned, they should just be recognised as films that tell pernicious lies to gain an audience. Horror fiction doesn't need to tell lies about people: the truth is scary enough. I think Joel is mostly right about this, but I'm afraid he's speaking in more general terms than I'm comfortable with. It seems rather reductive to me to say that "all films about devil children" are unhealthy -- although, to be fair, I can't think of any such film I admire. (Does "The Orphanage" count?) I'd just like to think the possibility exists that such a topic could be turned into useful fiction. Same goes for equating female sexuality with evil, or the idea that slasher films are misogynistic (I don't mean to suggest the latter is an argument of Joel's; it's just one that comes up often enough). These generalizations send off warning flares in my head. They are probably mostly true, but I suspect exceptions can (and possibly do) exist. As for that last statement ("Horror fiction doesn't need to tell lies about people ..."), well, that's easy enough to puncture, isn't it? After all, by definition, all fiction is a lie ... But I suppose I get what he means. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.211.140 |
Lies and fictions are not the same thing, Chris. Lies always pose as non-fiction. Fiction is not about telling lies, it's about shuffling the pack of truths. Fiction isn't a lie by definition, since it's read as fiction. Lies are fictions in denial. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
I've been thinking about this overnight. To vastly oversimplify things, I would argue that we are born with certain abilities and inclininations hard coded, e.g. sexual inclination must be genetic, it doesn't make sense as a learned behaviour- that would make it a choice, consious or otherwise, which I think we all agree it isn't. We have abilities built in when born, potential for intelligence if nurtured, potential for physical strength and build etc. If our intelligence is not hard coded, how can so many genetic/medical conditions affect it from birth? Our behaviours are then guided by our abilities and the opportunities we have to fulfill them. For example - Aggression is enhanced by lack of opportunities to fulfil our true potentials and failure to complete the random tasks set to us in life to the standards of those around us who are more disposed to those tasks. etc | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Twin studies are sometimes anecdotal, sometimes turn out to be fraudulent (Cyril Burt, Arthur Jensen) and always appear to have been cherry-picked from a vast field of experience that shows people from the same family diverging massively in accordance with upbringing and early experience. Or even with the same upbringing: the division of family roles is a microcosm of the division of social roles. The idea that 'blood will out' suits a right-wing political agenda, but generally has no more credibility than astrology (and, if anything, rather less anecdotal support). People generally confuse early experience with genetic inheritance. They tend to assume that social learning starts with school, whereas in reality it's mostly sewn up by then. the experience of our first three or four years sinks so deep inside that, as far as we are concerned, it might as well be genetically programmed. But it isn't. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Weber, I'm afraid only people who know nothing about genetics think sexual orientation 'must' be genetically programmed. It's not learned the way we learn a song lyric, but it's a behavioural pattern that develops through experience in the course of our lives, and has to do with our sense of identity and human relationships. A 'learned' behaviour is only a matter of choice if you choose to learn it, just as it's only a matter of blind compulsion if you see yourself as a victim of it rather than seeing it more positively. The idea that sexual orientation requires a unitary, simple explanation – whether a recessive gene, a failure of toilet training, a first sexual experience or the influence of pop music – has constantly retarded progress in our understanding of the versatile, fluid, creative nature of human sexuality. So there, petal. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
>>>The idea that 'blood will out' suits a right-wing political agenda Yes, that's the danger of conceding anything to the evolutionary psych school. But - as I've said - Pinker shows how it isn't a danger at all. Or at least, needn't be. >>>But it isn't. I'm not trying to row with you, Joel, but if you're refuting evidence in favour of biological factors at work in human development, then you're engaging in the debate on an evidence-based level. So is it really enough to support the alternative view to say, "But it isn't" ? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
No, Gary, but I'm not writing a thesis here. Just chatting. It's my lunch break. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
>>>such notions of how people develop run counter to all our experience and reason It's interesting that you seek recourse to experience and reason because it's on the basis of having talked to people about this issue that I started to review my undergraduate adherence to the notion of tebula rasa. Many folk I've spoken to - parents, many of them - have actually told me that in their opinion there are biological differences between people, particularly with regard to their experiences with children. This at least led me to 'sleep with the enemy' (no jokes, please ) and read folk like Pinker, who have proved very persuasive by presenting a good deal of interesting study data, as well as reducing the tensions involved in conceding some territory to the biological position. At any rate, he tackles head-on the received wisdom in academia concerning tabula rasa and shows how the fears of its potential consequences (wot you've mentioned above - right-wing, etc) are largely driven by agendas which read this material idiosyncratically, bend it to their political perspective. But it needn't be that way. We should not be afraid of giving a little to evolutionary ideas simply on account of such moronic hijacking by those whose agenda it serves all too well. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.253.231 |
Are you saying the sexual "pattern" is inextricable from the human, Joel? Like language would be both non-genetic, but inextricable? To seek to unlearn a language would seem more pointless than futile, though it's both - and this seems to be the place we're at in society concerning views on altering sexual "orientation" (the stigma attached to those who even desire to, the idea that dangerous deviants are non-reformable, etc.).... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
I'm saying it's Friday and I'm tired. I'd love to pursue this question through empirical research tonight, but a film and a take-away are more likely. Academic theories of sexuality tend to miss the point that people desire all kinds of things, for all kinds of reasons, in impossible combinations and at inappropriate times, and sometimes the cat gets involved by accident. My favourite comment on this theme came from Foucault: "We have had sexuality since the eighteenth century and sex since the nineteenth. What we had before then was no doubt the flesh." | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.227.224 |
I'd love to pursue this question through empirical research tonight...  It's still early here, and the cat's lookin' better to me already.... | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.34.189 |
Put the cat away...back away from the cat. I've been thinking about this quite a lot. I was there on the anti-nazi league demonstrations in Paris and Brussels in the 90's. I was really moved when a survivor of the camps showed me the concentration camp number on her arm and I know people aren't born evil. I can't think that the human mind is a blank slate though either - you wouldn't get many environmentalists going for that. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.34.189 |
Not environmentalists... I'm tired too .. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.144.132 |
Weber, it goes roughly like this... In non-human animal species, the most complex behaviours are not learned. In social insects, for example, the activities of individuals are governed by a very complex system of chemical signals triggering programmed responses. Even in mammals, the ability to learn is very limited. As a result, mammals know how to reproduce – but they show little variety. They don't even vary sexual positions, and atypical sexual behaviour arises only by default under predictable conditions of deprivation. Human beings have a unique capacity for learning (though we mostly teach each other not to use it: the two main things we are taught as children are how to ignore and how to forget). To make this possible, we lack much of the instinctual programming that other mammals have. A great many adolescent humans, when they try to reproduce, DO NOT KNOW what to do or why, and even their sexual desires don't inform them. Also, whereas animals in general know what to eat and how much for oprimum nutrition, humans don't: in relation to our bodies' needs, we eat too much or too little, at the wrong times and with all the wrong content. The hard wiring isn't there. This allows for individual and cultural diversity through active learning. We are not 'blank slates', we are adaptable and versatile active agents who learn everything through experience and interaction – by doing it, not by being told it. The idea that all this behavioural diversity is also hard-wired, that we (uniquely) are genetically programmed with a trillion different specific behaviours, is incoherent and runs counter to all our experience. The most influential 'sociobiologist', Edmund O. Wilson, came out with all kinds of ridiculous nonsense backed up by his expert knowledge of insect societies – but in relation to human behaviour he didn't have a clue about development, learning, change or even the realities of emotion. For example, he speculated that the 'cause' of male homosexuality was the need, in early human hunter-gatherer societies, for some men to stay home with the womenfolk and keep the caves clean and tidy, while the women attended to the babies and the other men went out hunting. In other words, homosexuality has nothing to do with sex or desire or love, it's to do only with the role of prehistoric interior decorators, primitive syle queens. I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP. Wilson is considered the leading authority on this kind of thing. This is not a 'tabula rasa' stance. It just is necessary for us to accept, scientifically and as human beings, that we have a unique innate capacity for learning and that this comes mostly at the expense of hard-wired instinctual guidance. And feel good about this instead of rejecting it as too dangerous. Most of what we say about 'human nature' is justification for refusal to learn and change: a refusal gained only by repression of those abilities. Like a zookeeper who cripples an imprisoned leopard with a hammer and then writes research papers on the leopard's innate inability to run. Our social system cripples human potential, including the ability to learn, and restrictive theories of 'human nature' have largely replaced theories of 'original sin' as a way of making that seem inevitable. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.144.132 |
Er, style not syle and omptimum not oprimum. But maybe those errors are genetically hard-wired and if I had an identical twin, he'd make them too? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.144.132 |
Optimum. Unlike my typing skills. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
>>>The idea that all this behavioural diversity is also hard-wired, that we (uniquely) are genetically programmed with a trillion different specific behaviours, is incoherent and runs counter to all our experience. I don't believe anyone said that here. Well, I know I certainly didn't. But let's not slot-rattle from nothing's-innate to everything's-innate. That's unhelpful bipolar thinking. The fact remains that a great deal of studies have shown that certain behavioural trends - and important ones - tend to account for a good deal of variance (or lack thereof) among people who share genes. Twin studies in Sweden (that country has a good deal of such data) have shown that core traits - behavioural trends, and not specific and complex behavioural profiles - tend to correlate across individuals separated at birth, and that precludes similar adoptive environments, etc. Yes, we can criticise these studies, but I'm pretty convinced that studies that show the contrary might be criticised in similar ways. There is no inarguably robust data here, just hints towards the possibility that biology may account for certain personality profiles. Plus, if it's experience and reason we're making a plea to (and not inadequate empirical data) then how can we account for, say, someone like Mozart? Was he simply a good learner (and if he was, does that call into play genetic preparedness?)? Hundreds of over-eager fathers took their children to task and a piano in the late 1700s/early 1800s and none of them matched Mozart's prodigious early abilities. Even Beethoven, who had a similarly pushy dad but who was always more of a musical plodder. (Mozart's manuscripts burst from his skull fully formed and perfect; Beethoven's involved crossings-out and evidence of imperfect labour. Regardless of the relative worth of their work.) In short, isn't someone like Mozart in possession of a genetically-decreed ability to bring sound together with such finesse? Don't tell he wasn't; I simply can't believe that. Okay, so the mental equipment may not have been structured in a way that made such music inevitable - hard work and support may well have led him to such heights. But whether you push back the genetic material to other aspects of the brain that ultimately coalesced to form Mozart, you still have the same deal: Mozart was born that way. Discuss? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
PS Yes, some of Wilson's comments are absurd, but so are the environmentalist Watson's. I mean, can anyone really take this seriously: "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years." Boys! Grow Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart In Your Cellar! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
>>>Our social system cripples human potential, including the ability to learn, and restrictive theories of 'human nature' have largely replaced theories of 'original sin' as a way of making that seem inevitable. Joel, you keep coming back to the politics of the issue. Is this what truly concerns you about conceding any territory to a biological model? As I've said above, that's the issue Pinker addresses in his book. In fact, he shows how 'blank slate' theory can result in similar problems. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select That may be true, but some will be better specialists than others - because of what Gary calls a genetically-decreed predisposition, or talent. Bath/And, baby. Both/And. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.231.106 |
I have to agree, simply because I know a young pianist in my music school who has IT to such a degree that he makes even adult and essentially more competent 'technicians' sound like mere noodlers. Most learners sound like they're building blocks when soloing whereas his playing is both intellectually and emotionally uplifting. After a brief chat it became increasingly clear, however, that he's also a little maniac who is totally consumed by music and works very hard at getting 'there'. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
I know a guy who can hear half of a song on the radio that he's never heard before, pick up a guitar and play the whole song. It's amazing to watch, and he isn't simply a quick leaner. He was born with natural talent. This tabula rosa stance seems to preclude natural talent - and talent is one of the few things I believe in. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
And since we're pitching anecdotal material, here's something interesting I heard at uni: one of my PhD directors of studies was (still is, probably) a dyed-in-the-wool social constructionist and "hates" evolutionary psychology with a passion. However, when we were talking to students on Open Day, he was asked how hard the course material was...and he replied, "It depends on the student. Some students are just born with more ability." It sounds trivial until you realise that this is how most people codify everyday life, including such academics. It's only when they're writing their papers that they switch to what they believe they're supposed to think. Just my experience. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
It's just a fact of life that some people are born with more ability than others. Psychological study aside, life experience shows you this better than anything - and I'm a student of human moves. A prize for anyone who can spot the film reference - film, actor and role, please.  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
Or as Pinker wryly points out: it's genuinely surreal when academics claim that intelligence isn't inherited when all they ever think about is how much more intelligent they are than their disciplinary rivals. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
>>>This is not a 'tabula rasa' stance. It just is necessary for us to accept, scientifically and as human beings, that we have a unique innate capacity for learning and that this comes mostly at the expense of hard-wired instinctual guidance. Yes. The reason why childhood development is delayed and involves dependency is to allow for this increased capacity to learn and to adapt to more complex human environments. But as you say, "mostly"; as I say, "increased". In other words, a bandwidth of behavioural potentiality also allows for adaptability. And that's not determinism, but it nonetheless imposes certain individual limitations and indeed possibilities. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
I watched a fascinating documentary about this case a few years back. What's interesting is that for many years the study was a standard textbook entry in the importance of environment on sexual development. The book PSYCHOLOGY by Richard Gross, which every A level and undergrad student uses, never changed its reportage of the original findings despite the following events: During his professional life, Dr Money was respected as an expert on sexual behavior, especially for allegedly demonstrating that gender was learned rather than innate. Many years later, however, it was revealed that his most famous case was the result of fraudulent reporting on the part of Money. The subject of Money's fraud was his involvement in the sex reassignment of David Reimer, in what later became known as the "John/Joan" case. Money reported that he successfully reassigned Reimer as female after a botched 1966 infant circumcision. In 1997, Milton Diamond reported that the reassignment had failed, that Reimer had never identified as female or behaved typically feminine. At age 14, Reimer, who had fought against being forced to see Dr. Money since age 7, refused to see Money again, threatening suicide if he were made to go. Reimer's parents then decided to tell Reimer the truth about his past, and biological sex. Reimer immediately ended the hormone treatments he had been forced to undergo to stimulate female sex traits, and began hormones to bring about the male puberty prevented by the removal of his testes by Dr. Money. He ceased using the name, Brenda, that his parents had chosen for him after he began treatment with Dr. Money, and chose a new name, David, for himself. At 15, with a different medical team, he sought a mastectomy, testosterone therapy and a phalloplasty. Later he married a woman who had children from a previous marriage and lived as a man until his suicide at age 38.[3] Money continued to publish that his work with Reimer was a "success" even 30 years later in various publications. In 2000, David and his twin brother alleged that Dr. Money had taken numerous naked photos of the twins during their treatment, and forced them to engage in "sexual play" at age 7. In 2003, his brother was found dead from a drug overdose. This deeply disturbed David, who visited his brother's grave 4-5 days per week. In 2004, upon being told by his wife of her intention to separate, Reimer committed suicide. Reimer’s parents have stated that they believe Dr. Money's treatment bears responsibility for the deaths of both their sons. |