I was wondering about something. Everyone knows that inherited traits have been passed down which are conducive and in accordance with reproduction and survival; however, is it possible that we have been naturally selected to survive psychologically, being predisposed to fall victim to favorable instinctive thought processes and mindsets: happiness, frequency of cognitive dissonance and biases, etc.?
Could be. Because an organism without an illusion based sense of well being might not feel like engaging in reproductive activity.
Works for me. What a day for a daydream…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDDB0cRZ7NU
Oh, and here’s a little Spoonful of bluesy jazz stuff with cool images.
A friend just sent this on more Spoonfuls and how the Lovin Spoonful got their name. It’s all a very interesting piece of blues history.
The second clip (Night Owl Blues) makes their interest in Mississippi John Hurt a great deal clearer than does their happy go lucky hits. Spoonful is a title that recurs in the blues as in this Willie Dixon penned tune by perhaps the greatest singer the blues produced.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TwEYuues6Y[/youtube]
Of course that fellow’s biggest influence was this guy from a generation earlier.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyIquE0izAg[/youtube]
The Lovin’ Spoonful took their name from this lyric.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXfcou4Qo7Y[/youtube]
They also drew inspiration from jug band music. Nice stuff. I’m a long time blues fan.
[size=50]I’m with the ILP Threadjack Response Team! Put your youtube links down, and step away from the thread! 
[/size]
It’s more than possible, it is practically an accepted understanding. There is much evidence to suggest that certain psychological traits are passed down. There is also much evidence suggesting that a certain degree of plasticity is engendered into the human brain, and mind, as there is with the rest of the body. These two ideas do not conflict. There is a tendency for people to separate the mind and/or brain from the body when looking at the human being from a genetic standpoint, but this is most possibly a cultural, rather than scientific, predisposition.
What is best assumed from the evidence, by many, but obviously not all of the people in the field of genetics, is that there is a mix of nature, nurture, and chance involved in the determination of a human mind. That is to say that some traits are passed on, some traits are learned/developed, and some are the result of mutation, thought the degree to which each of these relatively contributes to a person’s personality is difficult to determine.
On a side note: I don’t believe that I’d use the phrase, ‘‘fall victim’’, in this context, not just because I disagree with the sentiment, but also due to the fact that it isn’t really accurate.
To the ILP youtube thought police formerly and now thought of as Oran. How was that mutation for you? Or would you rather be known affectionately as the Grand Inquisitor for the Holy ILP Office of the Inquistion?
Jonquil the Outlaw Youtube Purveyor of Brain as an Effect of Mind and on Mind, brazenly and boldly offers this little video of Peter Russell talking as an experience of the mind through your brain.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj4HisssD_Y[/youtube]
“Fall victim”…? Curious terminology. “He fell victim to an ice-cream”. Anyway, yes and no. It’s not that we are ‘pre-disposed’ to certain mind-sets that favour survival, for two reasons: 1) the idea of pre-disposition implies the existence of some prior state of equivocacy, a state without these mind-sets. No such prior-state exists, we are born with some faculties poorly developed, seed-crystals which come to fruition only in post-adolescence, but pretty much, when we come out of the chute we are all that we are. And 2) Some ‘mind-sets’ are imperatives - inevitably possessed by anything living. Imagine a baby with no fear of fire for example, or worse still, an attraction.
And that’s the way it is. It’s not that the mind-sets set life up to survive, prior to the event, it’s that the only life which survived that event, was that which had possessed those mind-sets all along…