xssve
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The cerebral cortex deals mostly with abstraction, linguistics, and other forms of abstract processing - nobody is exactly certain how, but it does appear to create some sort of cognitive map, whether it's linguistic, holographic, or emotional, all three appear to contribute to varying degrees.
Most of your "feelings" appear to derive from the anterior cingulate cortex which appears to mediate between the limbic system and the paleomammalian cortex - I tend to think of the limbic, Reptilian brain as the Id, the mammalian cortex as the ego, and the cerebral cortex as the Superego, roughly speaking.
The mammalian brain contains all the mammalian social adaptations that reptiles largely lack, including dominance and submission (which help mediate competition that might otherwise lead to violence and injury), nurturing, grooming, courtship behaviors, etc.
This all appears to funnel through the anterior cingulate cortex, which leads to the expression of a particualar set of hormones and neurotransmitters depending on the stimulus, which generate emotional responses: fear and attraction, and their various analogs ranging from love and hate to fondness or suspicion, etc.
It's basically the pleasure principle, serotonin plays a significant role, and it amplifies the effects of some of the other hormones, in a manner of speaking - I don't fully grasp all of the complexities, it's an active field, but we tend to assign an abstract set of values to the resulting behaviors in terms of social or individual utility - both Id and Superego being essentially irrational, too much of the former and we call it poor impulse control, too much of the latter may result in delusions of grandeur, or conversely delusions of worthlessness (or both alternating, typical of pathological Narcissism), and are basically neurotransmitter surges that are out of sync with whatever constitutes a balance - not necessarily that easy to define, as what is adaptive under one set of conditions may be less adaptive under another.
There is always a tug of war in evolution between conformity and divergence, even on the genetic level - some percentage of a given population is always trying to be more alike, another percentage is always trying to be different (DRD4, possibly) while the bulk stay in the middle to see what works - the Law of the Observant Herd, as David A. Smith calls it.
Anyway, the upshot is, we all want to be different so as to attract potential mates, but not so different that people will stare at us and say rude things which might scare those potential mates away, and this is fairly easily abstracted via linguistic influences - i.e., we typically express approval or disapproval linguistically, and language is processed by the abstract, irrational portion of your brain, it's up to your ACC to determine whether those words "feel" right or not, or you can consult other abstract models in order to try to assign a value to them, you may value an acquaintance with the speaker more than an acquaintance with whoever or whatever they're referring to, etc.
It's complicated of course - if you have a fear of heights for example, no amount of safety precautions are going to reassure you - no matter how much you can prove you're safe rationally, you're still going to be extremely uncomfortable.
Anyway, naturally, fear is a great motivator, a fear of heights is what keeps us from jumping off of buildings without a parachute or a hang glider, it's essentially a very rational fear, when controlled - but one can instill irrational fears, particularly when a given individual or a population of individuals is prone to evaluate their self worth through external validation - you hear subs mention it, attention slut, etc., which is fine, it's being honest, we all crave at least a little validation once in while, it's all part of that conformity/deviation feedback loop, but a pathology of it can be exploited - you don't use this kind of Shampoo? Loooos-er.
It's a reasonably effective marketing strategy, if you don't use a particular good or service you will be socially shunned and publicly mocked - if that sort of thing doesn't actually turn you on, you may rationalize the purchase.
It's a very common marketing strategy in politics, i.e., if you aren't voting for our team, you're a Pinko, commie, nazi, child molester, etc., etc. i.e., incentivizing conformity out of fear of being socially ostracized, social death.
At the same time, it triggers a fundamental mammalian defensive behavior, the centripetal defensive response with is a group response to a group threat - foreigners, global communism, the gay agenda, Muslim terrorists, etc., and you are expected to do something about it RIGHT NOW.
In some case, there may some legitimate threat, but rational risk assessment really isn't the point: the point is to blow it out proportion into an immediate threat to your safety, which of course, the person warning you about can take care of for you if you vote for them, send them your social security check, etc.
i.e., now, not only are you shunning the target, you desire the active destruction of the offending deviation from whatever you have determined to be the norm - or at bare minimum, the short term utility of the fact that at least they aren't giving you the stinkeye.
I hope I didn't overdo it, I might be a little aspie myself.
< Message edited by xssve -- 12/31/2009 5:04:23 PM >
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RE: Is your D/s disposition mostly rooted in you Id, yo... - 
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