RE: Biological Social Webs and habits of Mind: Dennis Wolley ? (The psychology of Winning - In the Dale Carnegie, Carl Nightingale, Norman Bishop Peale, tradition of positive thinking ) says that habits start like thin spider webs but become chains over time, therefore practice good habits. Since, we are bound by our habits of mind let's learn new ones that help us. That is was what families and schools use to know "in their bones". As you raise a child that is how they will go in life. The Debbie Mier District # 4 schools in NYC (In Fiske Smart Schools) talks about education as habits of mind. C.S. Lewis says teachers habits and thereby their teaching have a lot to do with character, which everyone used to know. Education has something to do with wider horizons and seeing beyond ourselves and our cultural limits. That is why a year abroad is so educational. We learned so much in the peace corps. It was the best liberal arts school of our time, but mis-conceived of as a foreign aid program. (High School II a PBS film) References on request or on our FTP://gold.doi.com/ and HTTP://gold.doi.com and now NT //winserve.001/pflaump ) Bill Moyers body/mind T.V. program and book describes how we think with every cell of the body. The immune system is thinking in a different way than our language center in our left brain or visual thinking in the right brain. Athletes, artist, musicians, actors, scientist and mathematicians "think differently" but not only from genetic differences but also because of different habits of mind. Mozart was raised in a musical family. The traditional neurological (computer) model of an electorial mind, we learned about in school, must be expanded to include chemistry, peptites such as endorphines, which are deeply involved in habits from smoking and drinking, from sex to perception and disease. We must be aware that we "rationalize" compulsive behavior. When we are horney we may become romantic. We need a drink because of x, y, z (excuses). Bio-chemistry and neurology is the only sound basic of psychology and a sound psychology is the only base for all social science and theory. Recent research has described the mind and the "ID" (Brain structures) in new ways. It's more than Freud ever could have conceived and the dynamics are not Newton's or Maxwell's but Plank's quanta. The inter-play of dynamic energy fields. This leaves the door open a crack for para-psychology, ESP, etc. The left brain is busy "making up" reality to explain and justify our needs, passions, wants, desires, fears and other emotional content and feelings. Emotions and feeling are in the body first - anger in the shoulders, fear in the belly - (see Benison The Stress Response) In sleep, when the left brain is relaxed, (but still active) we can come in touch with the reality of body/knowledge or what I have called the "dream-time". The dreamtime (The last Wave Movie of Peter Weir) is the source and the origin of "people", our laws, customs, love and hates, what we are as humans. When we loose contact with the dream-time, contact with our bodies and ourselves, pay no attention to the natural world around us, we are in deep do-do. Wake-up (Tart) PAY ATTENTION the Sufi, Gestalt, BioEngerics, Yoga, Zen all explains states of conscienceness, and how people can be described as sleep walkers - coming into a darken room and see taking shadows for reality. Is Clinton, our anchors and T.V. people talking shadow or a "real" people ? See we don't know and confuse T.V. land for our clan territory. It's the way we are built. Myths and fairy tales are the foundation of human being as describe in Joseph Campbell's 1000 faces and by Carl Jung. ( About Neo-Plato, Socrates and the Interior Writing, Hermantic and Freemasons which is American Founding culture and other Sufi teachers, see A Story in the files, not everyone can understand or benefit from everything - there are secrets ) The infant child "bonds" with mother biochemically. Love is chemistry and much as neurology. It was just the neurologist and bio-chemist didn't talk to each other. The immune system contains learning and thinking in a different but profound way. Perhaps, profound knowledge is "body" habits, as suggested by ancient educational practice (Sufi, Zen, Hatha Yoga, Christian traditions such as the Jesuits, and the British Public School). Jane ? presents scientific evidence on how body/mind is damaged by television in "Endangered Minds". The neurological patterns, especially the left brain, rational language centers are badly wired with the excess of visual stimulus including Sesame Street. You only have to glance at MTV to understand brain damage. I suggest the neurological mal function is in concert with chemical disfunction augmented by bad diet. The learned habits of mind become chains that change "world-view or Gestalt" and deeply effect the bio-chemical bond between people, the order of society, educational practice, politics, economics and communications. Like all serious ailments the sickness feeds on itself. Because we have a breeding population with damaged social habits, their off-spring are even worse off. Television has put the process of "civilization" into reverse. Civilization as James Q. Wilson is the product of thousands of years of "good" habits called virtue, character, responsibility, family values, religion, political statesmanship, military skills, science, tradition, libraries, institutions, Universities, local governments, clubs and associations, a vast social infrastructure built on "culture" which is socially transmitted in child-raising. As the Greeks noticed the household is the "model" of the state (Polis). The issue of Family Values and Virtue (Bennett, Covey, Deming ) is not some Religious Right power play but the heart of survival of the "civilization". The need for "moral" revival is great. My example is Wallace's Handsome Lake in "The Death and rebirth of the Seneca", and why this book is so important to our times. Rebuilding character (not personality ) is an outward bound experience (body knowledge) and maybe new colonies like Markarenko's Gorki Colony. (The Road to LIFE..another time of social breakdown was in Russia civil war of the 1920's, end with a whimper or a bang - The Wasteland T.S. Elliot). Society is based on the body/mind bond created by family habits. We are our "culture" and the product of socialization. If the body/mind is not "programmed or video taped scripts" but screwed up by T.V. the social fabric unwinds. This is what is going on and why is so difficult to understand and do anything about. Remember the social breakdown of over crowded Norwegian Rats, they failed to keep up their nests and family duties collapsed to the point the population did as well. ************************************************ Peter E. Pflaum Ph.D. , Headmaster GLOBAL_VILLAGE_SCHOOLHOUSE The Golden Globe 225 Robinson Road, New Smyrna Beach FL 32169-2176 (904) 428-1355 ftp://gold.doi.com/internet101 HTTP://Gold.doi.com/ pflaump@america.com ************************************************