a contextual intro

Life-as-we-know-It begins with an ‘In Utero‘ experience that becomes our birth into trauma.
This catalytic event can either haunt us psychosomatically for the rest of our life or
become the fundamental building block of our Social-Emotional Intelligence.

Giving birth is not only inflicting physical & emotional distress on the mother, but is also
bombarding the helpless new-born with an array of unbearable sensations.
Leaving the comfort & warmth of the womb, being alone and cut off from all life support
is the first ‘live or die’ experience for the infant;

– Its entire survival depends on maintaining a secure attachment !

From there on the child’s existence & development hinges on the support of its family,
relatives & society where ‘it takes a village to raise a child’…

…and then of course, too often forgotten by the philosophies of our mono-culture, overlooked or systematically
ignored by the psychoanalyses of our anthropocentric civilizations, there’s our great provider and caretaker,
our Mother Nature !
Social-engineering separated our intellect from our social-emotions by converting & transcribing our sense of
moral agency into a collection of ethical principles, rules of conduct and eventually into these ‘Books‘ and
Canon of Laws that are governing our lives today.
Consequently, we raised generations of detached, ‘expelled’ & disengaged individuals that are struggling with
an ‘existence’ that is for the most part completely alienated from the Eco-Dynamic & Synergy of Life & habitat.

 

The unavoidable & inescapable birth phenomenon is especially horrifying & disturbing for a ‘lonesome’ being that
hasn’t developed the neuropsychological chemistry or mental capacity to cope with such loss & separation anxiety.

But as shocking & traumatizing this is, these birth phenomena are also activating or ‘setting-in-motion’ the new-born’s
own Limbic System and initiate the production & release of hormones and other neurotransmitters that are utterly
important for the mental & physical development & survival of the child.

 

From the somatosensory system and subconscious mind ^[A] to immune functionality and psycho-emotional balance,
the way we handle such stress or cope with these traumatic events is absolutely crucial for a healthy upbringing
and plays a key role in the formative years of the young Being.
Our early social-emotional attachments & relationships are the foundation of all our physiological & emotional
well-being, of our resilience, adaptability & perseverance.

Recovering from such early traumatic events and dealing with stress & insecurities is a lifelong undertaking.
Finding the right balance or ‘chemistry’ between our longing for closeness & attachment and the drive for
‘our own’ Authenticity is a social-emotional maturation process.

All growing and learning is a question of inquiry that originates in our longing for attachment & affiliation,
the restless search for a corresponding ‘extension’ of once life.

A lifelong desire to Know and our Quest for Belonging begins with the playful, sensory exploration and
inspection of our environmental surroundings that slowly grows into a more critical investigation with
analytical thinking that commands a more complex search for relevance & meaning.

xxx Maybe that’s why Jesus asked us to become curious & inquisitive like children ? ^[B]xxx

That’s where cognition becomes the learning, knowledge & experience
which amalgamate into the wisdom or sapience of our species.
All this is fueled by our sense of curiosity and processed by the empathy & compassion for all the ‘Others’

 

Meanwhile, a state of angst resulting from our growing alienation from Nature is sharpening
our need to understand how the evolution of technology has brought us to this point.

In order to understand this phenomenon,
it is vital that we turn our gaze toward the distant past,
our inside, our natural environment and all the Other ‘aspects’  that form our Life.

 

 

The Curiosity in Humans

 

Emotions need to be understood as an ‘organism‘ or ‘instrument’ that links
an individual network with its larger WAN, joins the Self with its family,
peers & society and connects us with the collective, our common habitat,
environment and all the ‘Rest of Creation’.

Our Emotions are Social-Emotional senses that process subconscious feelings,
sensory inputs and other nonverbally communicated perceptions
on a preconscious level of the mind.

A healthy psychosomatic reaction – any sensible & cooperative response, interaction
or communication requires a harmonizing coordination & interplay of feelings
and a well-regulated & ‘concerted’ management of emotions and behaviour.

 

 

 

 

Curiosity

x translated to German – Neugier is a word that combines ‘new’ with ‘greed’, x
x.x     the insatiable desire to gain new experiences, knowledge & skills.  xxx. x

 

Curiosity is the primordial emotion, the passionate, motivational desire to seek
information & knowledge, the inquisitive, ‘Withness Thinking‘
which is at the core of all Social-Emotional-Intelligence
and thus became the innate quality of our sapience.

 

 

If this Curiosity is immature & undeveloped or remains uneducated,
it becomes an unsupervised gateway to our Social-Emotional
Intelligence and is easily subjected to interference & manipulation.

Under these terms, all religious sins, misdeeds & trespasses,
as well as secular refusal & disobedience are based on the objection
of supervised ordinances & prohibitions.

Since Adam & Eve were deceived into eating the forbidden fruit from
the Tree of Knowledge or Tree of Life, we know that our sense of curiosity
is being used by self-serving & ruthless sociopaths that are out there
to subjugate & exploit all Others and the ‘Rest of Us’.

With ‘Bread & Circuses‘, ‘Sex, Drugs & Rock-n-roll‘ and all kinds of flashy things,
they continue to trick or coerce us into consent and behavioural patterns
that suits the pathological self-righteousness of their agenda.

 

“They will try their tricky device,
trap you with the ordinary,
get your teeth into a small slice,
the cake of liberty“
Ian Dury

 

With big slogans of hope and endless promises of joy & satisfaction, they get us
hooked on their agenda and make us susceptible to all kinds of manipulation.

The deeply emotional desire to experience the world and to gain more & better knowledge
of our environment can easily become a passionate pursuit of comfort & pleasure-only
and turn into obsessive love for more & more stimulus, sensation & thrill.

Let me ask you a couple of questions:
How did You figure things out, and if not for curiosity, what got You ‘Here’ ?

Isn’t it curiosity that sets our senses & sensibility in motion
so we can find our way thru life ?

Wasn’t it the inquisitive mind and the collective effort of our ancestors
that observed the organic constructs, mechanics & processes of our habitat,
studied content & context of all the natural phenomena of Life,
and developed all the careful & attentive collaboration skills
that have concocted the sapience that gave our species its name ?

Hasn’t it the examination of the environmental dynamics & correlations
and the analysis of behaviour & manners revealed that all things are in flux
and in a constant evolutionary process, that everything is interconnected
and entangled, not only with everything else out there, but also with
the curious observer itself ? (Quantum Mechanics)

 

 

Don’t we need this Curiosity to see the countless shades & colours in-between Night & Day,
to detect the nuances & subtleties that correspond with the extremes and to recognize
the pivotal importance of our emotions that set our Social-Emotional-Intelligence,
our ‘Participative Withness Thinking‘ (John Shotter) in motion
and get the ‘Wheel of Dharma‘(Buddhism) moving on ?

Aren’t all these terms of ‘proper’, ‘limitations’, ‘principles’ etc. just abstract,
linguistic (Logic) constructs, ethics, morals etc. that WE – as a collective – once came up with,
and that they are all subject to impermanence & change, like anything else ?

I Agree, not everything comes from curiosity; But – from the first breath we take –
everything we call consciousness, all our individual & collective experience, knowledge and
philosophy (Love for Wisdom) is the result, the fruit or ‘product’ of our DESIRE to know,
the careful inquiry & INVESTigation (- that’s where we should INVEST ourselves)

The real curiosity here is that this information-seeking ‘CURIOSITY’, or the
“cognitive induced deprivation that arises from a perceived gap in knowledge & understanding“
plays the leading role in our ’emotionally’ motivated ‘trade-off’ game,
– seeking reward & satisfaction for the ‘right’ effort and ‘good’ behaviour.

Today, neuroscience is able to link our curiosity to all kinds of pulsatile releases of hormones
and other tonics, from dopamine & endorphins to serotonin and testosterone which are all
enormously impacting our emotional functionality and consequently the mental health
of the entire population.

…and that’s where our Social-Emotional-Intelligence comes into play !

 

 

… and on second thought, if we don’t get our emotional functionality under control,
we will stay vulnerable to all kinds of manipulations,
from our conditioning in ‘educational’ institutions to all the
substitute rewards & satisfactions of propaganda & neuromarketing.

” The problems that education represses without solving,
I say to those repressed doubts: you are quite correct,
go on asking, demand clarification…” – Wittgenstein

 

Curiosity stimulates our Cognitive Sensitivity

 

Cognitive Sensitivity refers to the sensitivities of the central nervous system in coalescence with
the comprehension & processing of physical, social-emotional stimuli;
Thus enabling the individual to engage & participate in a cognitively stimulating manner, while
being attuned to the interactive partner’s environmental circumstances and emotional state.^[E]

 

 Seeking

Look inside,

all around you,

and leave no ‘stone‘ unturned !

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments or questions are welcome.