Educational Needs
Education reform requires a comprehensive plan that meets the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual needs of students and teachers. This is essentially a brain-based approach because each of those needs are perceived and fulfilled within distinct, needs-related neural networks. In order to successfully develop and implement education reform we must understand the functions of neural needs networks, have a generalized pattern for learning that is highly customizable, create tools to facilitate integration and individualization, and successfully apply our plan and tools in the classroom (or other learning environment).
Functions of Learning and the Brain
Learning generates activity and change in the brain. This requires input, processing, and output. There are six types of processing. They are: filtering/attending, sequencing, action, association/assimilation, categorizing/discriminating, and representing. Each network uses a primary set of learning mechanisms, but most of the networks utilize the majority of the processing mechanisms. The more mechanisms are activated, the more profound learning will be. All of these processes used together generates the capacity for problem solving.
Physical learning uses the body to move through dimensional space, record sensory information, and perform repetitive action (throwing a ball, playing an instrument, writing). Sensory input (the beginning of all learning) is the jurisdiction of the physical network. The physical network provides all input and does some filtering and attending. It also generates sequences of movement to take action. Therefore, sequencing, and action are the primary mechanisms of physical network learning as is filtering and attending.
Note the difference between network processing mechanism and input. We are focusing on step two of learning—the processing. Input is step one and output is step three. Later we will discuss how looping or overlapping this learning cycle in multiple networks creates amplification because of the integrative overlap of functions within and among the networks.
The intellectual network is driven by the need to model and organize sensory input. As such, it attends sensory input that relates to usable knowledge such as word sequences, charts and maps, and sound signals. As a result, it forms chains of logic through their primary processing mechanism of sequencing and associating. However, any conscious verbalization (internal or external) of the six forms of processing is a highly cognitive activity. In other words, anything we learn that we can mentally store and can explain has passed through the intellectual network.
The emotional network is driven by the need to form or understand relationships between self, others, and environment. Therefore it attends input about interactions and relationships such as tone and inflection, pheremones, body language, and touch. As a result, its primary processing is associative and categorical/discriminatory. What things belong in what groups? Where do I fit in as an individual? The emotional network does much of the cross-network integration as it associates multiple inputs into experiences, but there will be no words to explain it since it does not necessarily pass through the intellect.
The spiritual network has the need to understand meaning, form ideals, and pursue purpose. As a result, it is the primary network of representation. It attends input related to art, beauty, and values as it generates meaning for symbols (to include language), ideals, and visions. The other main processing mechanism is to categorize and discriminate between good and bad.
We can consciously generate depth of learning by using the dimensions of the learning triangle. Alfred Bandura’s concept of reciprocal determinism (Hergenhahn, 1997) is the foundation of learning. The learning triangle is a graphic I developed to demonstrate and expand the application of input, processing, and output. The input of environment is processed by the person with behavior as the output. Each affects and causes the other in an inseparable feedback loop and constitutes learning. This is layer 1.
Layer 2A is environmental learning. It is emotional or relational in nature. Sensory stimuli are the input. Need and utility are the processing, and reinforcement is the output. The person is a deeper layer of that feedback process (lets call it layer 2B) with situation being the input (D), personality being the processing (E), and maturity being the output (F). This loop creates identity learning. Layer 2B is spiritual in nature. Layer 2C is behavioral learning. It has the input of action (D), the processing of belief (E), and the output of habit (F). It is physical in nature. So where is the intellectual learning? It occurs on Layer 3BD, meaning within 2B—the processing of personality. The input of need preference (G), the processing of need analysis (H), and the output of need efficacy (I) is intellectual in nature and it informs and defines personal identity. This demonstrates how individual and personal learning really is.
Hopefully you can see that each of the layers is an elaboration of the original feedback triangle. Note that any of the other aspects or layers of learning that can be consciously explained or defined have passed into the depth of intellect. Even more importantly, note that intellect is not reached without depth.
Environmental learning on level 2A is a model of operant conditioning. This widely used paradigm of mid-century education (Jensen, 2008) when replaced by the learning triangle model of education is clearly revealed to be lacking in depth and ineffective in educating the whole child.
In Piaget’s view on the depth of feedback processes within systems “As children resolve the conflict that exist between cognitive sub-systems, psychological structures develop into increasingly broad and integrated wholes” (Constructivist Theories 2005).
The Plan
The following is a model for state and local curriculum and course development. It is a comprehensive, but fundamentally different approach to education that would require a large cooperative team to fully develop. Once done, it could be implemented in a relatively short period of time while being designed for continuous improvement. It can be generated as a grassroots movement or be mandated and facilitated on the national level. However, it should probably be implemented as a whole rather than in stages. All of the training, tools, and resources should be available when the program is presented in its entirety. Otherwise, discouragement and skepticism might derail the program.
Assess multiple dimensions of learning and teaching styles and match students to compatible teachers. Learning styles have several dimensions, but they can most easily be categorized according to need preferences (3BDG). Each individual has a tendency to more readily utilize one neural needs network over another. We can tell what these preferences are by the activities and associations a child gravitates toward. A physical child gravitates toward movement and activity. He is a kinetic and spatial learner. An intellectual child is drawn to reading and writing. An emotional child gravitates toward language and social transaction. A spiritual child constantly asks why in pursuit of meaning. These are examples of an extensive array of traits and preferences that must be evaluated and associated with specific needs networks.
Teachers who share a student’s traits and preferences should be her primary educator. But she should also be given ample experience with teachers and students of different preferences and abilities to expand their learning experience and develop the whole brain. This should be done after she is secure and confident in her learning ability. She must consciously be introduced to alternative approach teachers as a challenge to her current way of doing things.
Parent/Student/Teacher course selection. One of the most powerful motivators for education is personal choice. We must ensure the right of students, parents, and communities to select curriculum, courses, and lessons that are in line with personal, familial, and community values. Even from elementary school, a child can be given choices regarding the subjects he wants to study. If he is interested in sports, then all of his required learning should utilize that theme in instruction. In addition, his parents have the right to select the lens of values through which his educational subjects are taught.
Of course, this is not possible in the current education system. I will show you in the tools section how it can be possible, even with minimal structural overhaul.
Appropriate student collaborative grouping. Much has been said about the value of cooperative learning (e.g. Viilo, M.; Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P.; Hakkarainen, K., Feb. 2011). However, this is a two-edged sword. It is not appropriate or effective to pair students with those they do not like or to randomly group them. When students are grouped with a teacher by shared learning styles, values, and subjects, emotional need satisfaction is amplified, peer-bonding is increased, and emotional tension (like personality conflict) is reduced.
Present subjects four times; once in each of the needs categories. We must engage all six forms of processing in layers within each of the networks. This generates inter-network connectivity--meaning brain flexibility and plasticity--in addition to generating a more comprehensive and dimensional understanding of lessons learned.
Each lesson should be taught on a weekly lesson plan with the same concepts (simple or complex according to student capacity) taught each day of the week with the approach and emphasis being on a different one of the four needs. If there is a fifth day of the week, that lesson can be focused on integration of all the week’s learning.
Utilize learning triangles (dimensions of input/processing/output feedback) for integration. As teachers we can generate inputs and monitor outputs. However, if we understand an individual student’s processing we will be better able to measure their success and influence future processing. With in-depth individual knowledge we can plan far more effective inputs. How do we know a student’s thought processes? We have to ask her. We have to create projects, assignments, and activities that allow her to securely reveal her preferences, understanding, and personal meaning—if not for teachers, administrators, and legislators then for her personal benefit. Her sense of efficacy will grow as she recognizes the value of her own input and processing in classroom output.
The Tools
Assessment and matching software. Software must be developed that calculates dimensions of compatibility and need. This concept is parallel to the programming used by dating websites to match potential mates. In this way, administrative class selection is not arbitrary or based on parental demands, giving preferred students to preferred teachers, or trying to evenly distribute “problem children.” Students will be able to learn from the best teacher for them alongside the best classmates for them.
Lesson plan/course-credit database and search engine. (State level first if necessary, national level ultimately.) It would be impossibly time consuming for a teacher to create a separate lesson plan for each of her students for each day of the week. That is why this plan could never be possible previous to this century. The way to facilitate individualized lesson plans is to provide all teachers access to a database where they submit and search for lesson plans within a network. Finding relevant lesson plans will be facilitated by search tags associated with development level, needs focus, topic/theme, subject, value, and curriculum.
To save time and simplify, individualized lessons do not have to be fully open-ended but can be a choice among 3-6 themes by which students group themselves with students of similar interest, while all classmates are studying the same topic. In this way, the integration lesson can include students from one group sharing the subject with their theme to students of the other groups.
The more schools that implement this at once, the bigger the resource pool will be for teachers getting started. It will probably best to give the students their course selections before summer vacation of the coming implementation year so that there will be time for lesson development. Teachers will get a summer bonus for the time they spend in the first year of the program. However, the real bonuses will come as teachers are paid for high quality lesson plans that are downloaded, utilized, and positively reviewed by other teachers, students, and parents. Their art and creativity can and should be rewarded as any other patent, copyright, or trademarked professional
Each lesson will be categorized according to course and curriculum requirements and will be permanently and nationally tracked. This will be a great benefit to students who move a lot. This system makes it so that credit can be awarded on an individual pace rather than a rigid grading period—though a certain number of lessons per week should be required. However, this structure allows a student to take more lessons from different angles if he does not thoroughly understand the topic or subject—while keeping learning novel and avoiding diminished efficacy for not “progressing” with classmates.
Community and business resources. Business professionals and community members may also be invited to submit reviewable lesson plans in their areas of expertise, using the standard format. They may be compensated for download and use of their lessons or courses. Furthermore, parents can submit adaptations and applications of existing lesson plans. They may not be compensated unless they are a certified teacher or a business professional writing in their area of expertise.
Continuous stream of human intelligence and creativity unleashed When students, parents, teachers, and administrators are given the ability to provide real and practical input from the perspective of individual processing, and affect output, it will generate a feedback loop of amplifying intelligence and creativity. Further, the sense of efficacy and cooperation within a community will grow. This is the way to generate political empowerment and participation in a democracy. This was the purpose Thomas Jefferson envisioned for public education.
Applications
Using a student topic choice of baseball, a parental value choice of right versus wrong, and a teacher lesson choice of the brain in a state curriculum choice of science we can utilize our tools to form a comprehensive lesson plan.
Physical sample lesson: Parts of the brain.
Interview sheet pre-exposure. How does your brain learn to play baseball? What part of the brain learns the rules? What part of the brain identifies the ball? What part of the brain directs your arm to throw the ball? What part of the brain maps out the playing field? What part of the brain determines the force you have to use to throw that ball to your desired location?
Brain model and labeling: Label the parts of the brain model and properly reassemble.
Physical activity. Throw baseball to friends from different distances. Did you consciously think about throwing it harder to the friends who are farther away, or did you just do it?
Intellectual Sample Lesson Computer activity 1: Reading on functions of brain parts followed by cross-lateral part column and function column matching—relating all functions to baseball.
Computer activity 2: Worksheet. What are the names of at least three famous baseball players? What position did they play? What were some of their averages and biggest accomplishments? Finding and remembering those things requires cognitive function. What parts of the brain are most helpful for that?
Social/Emotional Sample Lesson Computer activity: Fight or Flight neurochemical activity reading.
Journal activity: Why do you love baseball? Who are your favorite people to play it with? Who taught you how to play? What part of your brain helps you feel that way? How do you feel when you are running to a base and the baseman in front of you is about to catch the ball? What do those feelings make you do? What happens to the rest of your body during and after that?
Social activity: play an abbreviated game of baseball.
Spiritual Sample LessonGroup discussion (among students who have selected the baseball learning theme for the brain unit): What are the rules of baseball? What are the consequences for breaking the rules? Why do people play sports and games? To what parts of the brain do these questions apply? Come up with a baseball metaphor for life. How is the brain like a baseball? How is the brain like a game of baseball?
Arts integration: Sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Write new words to it about the parts or functions of the brain.
Essay: What does baseball mean to you?
Conclusion
We must facilitate genuine learning that is relevant to all of a students needs. With a clear picture of what those needs are and a whole plan (rather than a piecemeal one) to make it happen, change should not be nearly so arduous as it has heretofore been. A whole plan that uses the whole brain can make whole communities and children more fully realize their potential.
References
American Educational Research Association (2001, Apr 10-14). An integrated hands-on inquiry-based cooperative learning approach: the impact of the PALMS approach on student growth.
Constructivist theories. (2005). In Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/cupchilddev/constructivist_theories
Hergenhahn, B.R. & Olsen M.H (1997) Introduction to theories of learning, 5th ed. Prentice Hall; New Jersey.
Jensen, Eric (2008). Brain-based learning: the new paradigm of teaching 2nd ed.. Thousand Oakes; Corwyn Press.
Purdy, Noel & Morrison, Hugh (February 2009). Cognitive neuroscience and education: unraveling the confusion. Oxford review of education 35:99-109.
Varma, S. & Schwartz, D.L. (June 2008). How should educational neuroscience consceptualise the relation between cognition and brain function? Mathematical reasoning as a network process. Educational research 50:149-161.
Viilo, M.; Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P.; Hakkarainen, K., (February, 2011). Supporting the technologically enhanced collaborative inquiry and design project: a teacher’s reflections on practices. Teachers and teaching: theory and practice 17:51-72.
15 July 2011
05 May 2011
The Need To Learn
Introduction
Why and how do we learn? What do we need to learn? Human and animal physiological structures are wired for leaning. It is clear that the brain and nervous system with all their microstructures and functions give us the capacity to sense stimuli and respond, learn from those responses, and adjust behavior accordingly. This allows us to survive and adapt to our environment, or alter our environment to suit our needs. This sort of bidirectional feedback between environment, personal need or meaning, and behavior are the functional operations of learning. Bandura described this as reciprocal determinism. We can take our understanding even further if we replicate his model onto a synthesis of 1) his concept of situational behavior with 2) Piaget’s concept of developmental growth, and 3) the classical concept of personality. That combined with my concept of Quadrifacet human needs constitutes a truly encompassing theory of learning. All of these things occur within the biochemical structure of human physiology and can be observed in action from the micro to macro levels.
Learning Functions and Feedback
Bandura’s concept of reciprocal determinism can be visualized as a triangular graphic. The following triangles represent deeper levels of the functioning mechanism in each of the learning factors above. They are visual representations of the synthesis of cognitive, behavioristic, and holistic schools of thought made in neurophysiological terms. The diagrams all follow the same form with the right corner of the triangle representing input, the left representing processing and the top being output. Therefore, our definition of learning is: processing that synthesizes environmental inputs and/or behavioral outputs. Analysis of these reactions produces changes within primary neural networks (spiritual, physical, emotional, and intellectual). Those changes can catalyze further changes in, or integrations with, other primary networks.
The Identity Learning triangle goes into Bandura’s Person triangle. It summarizes Piaget’s concept of schema. Whom a person perceives their self to be is an ever-changing product of their personality, given situation, and their maturity, which personality and maturity we will explore further in a moment.
Behavioral learning goes in the behavior triangle in Bandura’s learning triangle. What a person believes guides their actions and what they have done and observed has shaped their beliefs. This combination has formed habits, which have ingrained certain beliefs and altered the structure of their lives so as to limit their sensory experience within their habitual environment.
The Environmental Learning triangle fits inside Bandura’s environment triangle. As you can see, it contains many of the concepts of advanced behaviorist thought. What is useful or of need is what is most readily perceived of all environmental stimuli. The learning state is one of seeking the reinforcement of need satisfaction or aversion from need deprivation. And within the stimuli triangle we must recognize as Piaget did that “How an organism interacts with its environment will depend on the kind of cognitive structure available to the organism…The cognitive structure that exists at any given moment sets the bounds on what can be assimilated by the organism” (Hergenhan 1997).
Personality is an individual’s pattern of processing and behavior that is determined by the individual’s need efficacy, need analysis and need preference. Preferences can be spiritually, emotionally, physically, or intellectually focused. Need preference is the priority a person places on any one or combination of those needs. Need efficacy is a person’s sense of capacity to meet his or her own needs or the person’s access to or influence over those with power or resources. Need analysis is the ability to perceive and evaluate the four facets of need and the states of satisfaction achieved through personal thought, action, and/or experience.
Individual Needs
While evolutionists maintain a narrow view of physiological survival and assume all learning is based upon the physical needs of nutritive sustenance, protection, and survivalist procreation, there are other needs that are inherently wired into human physiology. All the needs are manifested in specific physiological regions of the body and form an integrated systems network, which drives the organism to fulfill those needs. The system must learn how best to fulfill those needs. Hence, learning is vital to our survival and well-being.
Quadrifacet Needs
All learning is motivated by the drive to satisfy any or all of the four areas of human need. Intellectual brain networks are what we primarily associate with learning. The body parts and neural networks associated with the senses are connected to various cerebral regions to process and interpret, filter and associate external sensory stimuli. The primary need of the intellectual network is to receive, process, and interpret external sensory stimuli. This allows us to sense the outside world and form cohesive concepts of objects, persons, and sensations, as well as to associate cause and effect, and remember sequences of events and perceive time. Memory is a very important aspect of the intellectual network.
Physical brain networks allow for the functioning and movement of all physical activity and are primarily regulated in the cerebellum, brain stem, and spinal cord. The primary physical needs are for nutritive sustenance, protection and defense, and reproduction. The association of physical networks with emotional networks produces drives to satisfy physical needs for food, physical work (building protective structures and coverings, etc), fighting/defending, and copulation.
What of the impact of the physical needs network interactions with other needs networks? Robert Brummer notes the powerful connections of the “brain-gut axis” “describing the bidirectional communication pathways connecting cognitive and emotional centers in the brain with neuroendocrine centers, the enteric nervous system and the immune system” (p.98).
Emotional brain networks are motivated by the need to function in a system larger than self. Cooperative sociality is the ultimate power to expand system functions. These functions are developed and improved in infant-parenting interactions that develop or inhibit the efficacy of future social interactions.
Swain and his colleagues (2007) have recently done important work in expanding John Bowlby’s attachment theory of a “universal human need to form affect laden bonds” (p.263). Their research shows that people with organized attachment patterns showed increased activity in the right amygdala, left hippocampus, and right inferior frontal gyrus. Areas of social and emotional empathy activation are in the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporal cortex.
Spiritual networks are responsible for abstract and symbolic learning in specific regions of the brain. It is the spiritual need to conceive idealizations and manifest them that promotes goal setting, symbolic learning, and artistic creativity. Language, art, and, of course, religion develop spiritual learning. However scientific method also develops spiritual learning networks. Scientific method is a hypothesized ideal and an ordered goal for verifying idealizations, which is nearly the definition of spiritual learning. However the distinction between scientific and religious learning is that science must be verified by reconciling the external sensory stimuli of the intellectual network and religion must be verified by the interpretation of internal sensory experience, which can only be verified by the person actually experiencing it. One can report the experience to others, and they can believe your report, but until they have the experience themselves, it is not verified.
Spiritual and emotional network integration processes internal sensory stimuli and operate subconscious to the processing of external sensory stimuli within the intellectual brain network. Sandra Blakeslee (2008) describes the neural network of transcendental spiritual experiences associated with meditative bliss or out-of-body sensations. While this can represent a culmination of spiritual need satisfaction, it is not the definition of spiritual satisfaction.
Only when the intellect is integrated with the emotion and spirit are we capable of understanding our complex and even contradictory approaches to satisfying our multiple needs. Spiritual learning primarily helps us to meet our spiritual and emotional needs and intellectual learning helps us most in meeting our physical needs and intellectual needs. However the more thorough our integration of learning, the more integrated our satisfaction of varied needs will be, and thus it will be all the more satisfying. (I talk about Needs Network Amplification in my social psychology paper, Social Networks.) Integrated satisfaction can also manifest as self-empowerment, performance pride, or a sense of unity or completion. These psychic outcomes of integrated action, thought, and emotion are processed spiritually and emotionally.
Cognitive Processes
Cognitive activities, or methods of processing include (any or all of these at once) association, categorizing/discriminating and filtering/attending, sequencing, action, and representing (abstractions, language, and symbols). Although Tolman labeled these processes as learning it is more useful to think of them as processing mechanisms that lead to learning. Furthermore, none of these processes exist independently. They operate as a whole program.
I have simplified Tolman’s terms. Association is what he referred to as cathexes. This is the joining and synthesizing of inputs, the forming of wholes from the endless parts of information.
Tolman made two categories out of equivalence beliefs and drive discriminations when the same operating process is at work for both concepts. Categorizing is discriminating between what satisfies and what does not, what belongs together and what does not. We could say, more specifically that it is association processes which allow us to connect things and categorizing processes which allow us to distinguish them. Categorizing is very important in helping us filter or attend environmental or internal stimuli. Stimuli are categorized as presently important for filling needs, or not. My stomach is providing internal cues that I need to eat, but I have chosen not to attend to it because I have a greater present need to capture these mental concepts before I forget them.
Sequencing is equivalent to Tolman’s field expectancies. The sequencing process gives us the concepts of time and cause and effect relationships. Sequencing does not occur without memory in some form. This brings up the question of what memory is. For now, we will define memory as the cellular/microcellular storage of outputs, processes, or inputs. To clarify: learning is the synthesis of processes and memory is the storage of that synthesis. From simple assembly of sound waves or light images into a single sound or object image to the complexity of learning an operatic aria and performing it, sequencing and memory have vital interaction.
Finally, I believe that Tolman’s concept of field cognition modes could be better described as representing. Analog, abstraction, language, and symbols are forms of representing that allow us to correlate other learning experiences, share them, clarify them, and give meaning to them.
Tolman was correct for labeling motor patterns as learning. It would be confusing to include action as a process like I have with the other things he labeled as types of learning. Action is a learning output formed from the inputs and processes. Action further provides feedback because it is a way to test cognitive propositions. That is why it is a critical part of learning feedback. Motor processes include physiological operations that allow seeing, touching, tasting, etc. With this understanding we can see, even on a micro level how the output of action further facilitates sensory input for further analysis and action in the critical cycle of feedback.
All of these learning feedback processes must be catalyzed by valence states, or needs (similar to drive reduction or cognitive disequilibrium) that must be properly interpreted by the animal to correctly meet vital or tangential survival needs. In all higher functioning animals there is the capacity for one need to override or take priority over another need. This is a function of filtering processes.
For humans, however, the complexity of needs creates conflicting signals about need priorities. Further, the interrelated circuits can cause ambiguity in interpreting valence states and the underlying needs that may or may not be satisfied in a given situation or series of causal and personal relationships.
The Physiology of Learning
What, Then, Is Learning? Learning is the integration and interpretation of stimuli into any of the physiological needs networks in such a way as to help an organism meet any or all of its Quadrifacet needs. Any learning helps us to alter our behavior in order to adapt ourselves to our environment to satisfy our needs or it helps us to adapt the environment itself to suit our needs.
The primary translation of this concept in evolutionary thought is focused on strictly physical needs. Adding the three other classifications of need allows us a more comprehensive understanding of human behavior and motivation.
How Do We Learn? Learning tools include categorization, sequencing, memory, analysis, and practice. Memory is an important tool for integration. It allows us to associate the varied stimuli of past experience so that we can create catalogs of experiences and place them properly according to category. Sequencing, of course, is impossible without a memory of what came before.
Physical experiences are translated into abstract meaning in the spiritual network (analysis). That meaning is applied to future physical experiences that have been categorized into groups of similar meaning and can be repeated or avoided based on the remembered sequence of events associated with the experience. If the proper meaning or significance of an experience is ascribed to it as meeting, or not meeting one of the Quadrifacet needs, a person can effectively learn how to meet their needs. However, in a culture that does not clarify these needs, it may be especially difficult to glean the most satisfying meaning from our experiences and seek those experiences which most effectively satisfy our needs.
What Do We Learn? We learn what generates positive and negative valences. Positive valences give a reinforcing sense of satisfaction. Negative valences produce a sense of dissatisfaction or negative reinforcement. We learn that satisfaction reduces our sense of need, or that we have obtained what we need. These sensations occur on the biochemical level and are interpreted in conscious thought and subconscious processing.
One thing that we must learn, but do not do so naturally is that there is a difference between the sense of satisfaction and the satisfaction of an actual need. This was demonstrated by Olds and Milner (1954, cited in Hergenhan). When rats were artificially stimulated in reinforcement centers in the brain without receiving any necessities, they preferred the immediate gratification, but had very rapid response extinction because there was no integrated network reaction from the stimulus. This is false satisfaction. Drug induced responses and any sort of addictive behavior are the result of this mechanism. Recall how this reinforcement interferes with infant bonding in cocaine addicted mothers. False satisfaction, then is the generating mechanism for addiction. Filling a need with a false satisfier induces increased use of the satisfier for an increased sense of satisfaction, but because it does not satisfy a genuine need, no quantity of it will ever generate genuine satisfaction.
We must further understand that any physical need substituted with a spiritual need, for example will never satisfy that need. Substitute satisfaction will not signal dissatisfaction, but it will fail to fully satisfy. Therefore, those unaware of their specific needs will be left to feel that if they did more of the same thing the need would somehow be satisfied. While this does not require any form of addictive behavior, it does tend to produce maladaptive behaviors.
Therefore, we must understand that temporary or partial satisfaction may indicate an incorrect form of satisfaction. For example, one could test how satisfied they are with a non-nutritive food and note that they continue to want more of the same type of food and still be only partly satiated. Testing the hunger contrast when eating nutritious foods should produce fewer episodes of hunger—especially in conjunction with proper hydration. However, there would need to be a period of extinction where the habit of responding positively to the sensation of a stretched stomach becomes disassociated with the sense of satisfaction.
We must also learn that there are some actual needs that can satisfy one facet of being at the expense of another facet of being. When this is the case, a non-contradictory method of satisfaction must be sought to achieve genuine well-being.
Thresholds
There are three kinds of threshold: 1) stimulus threshold 2) response threshold and a processing threshold. Normalizing mechanisms set the threshold within narrow parameters or comfort zones. There is not time to further develop these concepts here, but the theory is not complete without at least mentioning the impact of thresholds.
Conclusion
Learning is motivated by the biochemical induction of satisfaction valences. Those valences enable integration of information (stimuli) across spiritual, physical, emotional, and intellectual networks with the system goal of achieving overall satisfaction, which produces biochemical balance and genuine well-being.
References
Blakeslee, Sandra (April 2008) Flesh made soul: a new theory in the neuroscience of spiritual experience. Science and Spirit 19:26-31.
Brummer, R.J. (May 2005). Nutritional modulation of the “brain-gut axis.” Scandanavia journal of nutrition 49:98-105
Hergenhahn, B.R. & Olsen M.H (1997) Introduction to theories of learning, 5th ed. Prentice Hall; New Jersey.
Swain, J.E. et al (2007). Brain basis of early parent interactions: psychology, physiology, and in vivo functional neuroimaging studies. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 48:262-287.
08 March 2011
The Whole Brain: Satisfying Integrated Networks of Human Need
Introduction
Neurological disorders can instruct us on specific functions of the brain and nervous system. However, if we do not have a reasonable understanding of integrative system functions, we are much less likely to address the root causes and what can be done to prevent or even cure the disorders. I propose a multi-dimensional theory of encompassing needs and their impact on the structures and functions of the brain. Physical, spiritual, intellectual, and emotional brain functions each have associated and interdependent needs. They require synchronous and balanced satisfaction in all areas to achieve physiological wellness. I will discuss the physiological impact of the satisfaction or deprivation of those needs in a systemic context.
Individual Needs
I have posited in other papers the role of fundamental human needs in producing individual well-being as well as the impact of those needs in shaping human sociality from family life to global politics and economics. Now I get to the functional origin of all those complex systems, the human mind.
Each of our needs categories has a different region and/or network of operations within the central nervous system. Our physical needs are indicated, sought, and satisfied via our physical brain networks. We all know that we need food, clothing, and shelter to survive. Also, in order for our species to survive, we need to procreate. We are biologically imbedded with the drive to survive. Most every area of biological research has addressed these complex interactions of our physiological compulsion to eat, “nest,” procreate, and defend. However, on the microcellular level, we also have the physical need for adequate structures for biochemical and bioelectrical processing. Foreign or genetic interference with these processes can manifest a spectrum of illness and disorder.
From an evolutionist perspective, those needs are responsible for our species-specific traits and behaviors. However, those are not the only needs that influence our traits and behaviors.
Emotional brain networks are motivated by the need to function in a system larger than self. As, per Systems Theory (Bertalanffy, 1965) all molecules and organisms function within a system. Humans, as part of those systems function toward increasing the order of those systems. Natural, open systems, such as ecological biology reproduce, perpetuate, expand, and evolve systems effectiveness.
Cooperative sociality is the ultimate power to expand system functions. These functions are developed and improved in infant-parenting interactions that develop or inhibit the efficacy of future social interactions. Swain and his colleagues (2007) have recently done important work in expanding John Bowlby’s attachment theory of a “universal human need to form affect laden bonds” (p.263). They detailed the complex interactions of the mesocorticalimbic and the nigrostriatal dopamine systems in reward behavior motivating responses to infant cues such as crying. They are “important in activating healthy maternal reward and motivational circuits” (p.268). These circuits, however, can be “hijacked” by cocaine use, which substitutes all those emotional responses, and minimizes the natural intrinsic rewards. Lack of appropriate emotional response from his addicted, unresponsive mother reduces the child’s future capacity to respond emotionally to others.
People with organized attachment patterns showed increased activity in the right amygdala, left hippocampus, and right inferior frontal gyrus. Areas of social and emotional empathy activation are in the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporal cortex.
Spiritual brain networks form and respond to idealizations, which are responsible for planning, setting goals, inquiry, and all forms of symbolic creativity. We all have the spiritual need to imagine, believe, and create. The ultimate satisfaction of this need is to imagine one thing, believe in it, and see the fruits or evidence of that belief manifested in physical creation or experience. The motivator for that satisfaction is the deeper, spiritual need to understand abstract ideals via interpretation of internal sensory stimuli translated to outward reality.
The ideal of the perfect self is universally acknowledged to exist outside of self. Therefore, spiritual experiences often include the suppression of self-awareness and a connection to a transcendental self of an ultimately idealistic nature. Johnstone and Glass (2008) created a basic model of spiritual activity in the brain where “individuals may experience transcendence (feelings of universal unity and decreased sense of self) by minimizing right parietal functions through conscious effort, as in meditation” (p.871). The also proposed the need for further understanding the role of the thalamus’ attentional abilities and the emotional impact of the limbic system in spiritual experiences.
Emotions are internal stimuli, which the spiritual network has a need to comprehend and integrate, so emotional and spiritual needs have many overlapping circuits.
Simply put, we need ideals to become real. Balanced satisfaction of this need produces evolutionary effects. Dissatisfaction produces intellectual reinterpretation of ideals.
Intellectual brain networks have the primary need to understand and apply knowledge through chains of logic based on the analysis of external sensory stimuli (versus the internal sensory analysis of the spiritual network). Spiritual inquiry and creativity is an independent precursor to intellectual knowledge or intellectual knowledge can motivate spiritual inquiry. When used in a cycle of discovery, spiritual, physical, and intellectual knowledge, effectively integrated produces understanding of universal ideal.
On a more basic level, our intellectual network gives us sound and analysis necessary in language, sight analysis for vision and recognition, numbers and logic, and all of our conscious learning and interpretation of the world around us.
Physiological Impact
The satisfaction of each of these needs can be monitored through analysis of inductive valences. Dissatisfaction or deprivation causes negative valence in proportion to the force of potential need an experience produces. Need-satisfying stimuli and experience has a positive valence. The integrated satisfaction of all needs creates a continuous chemical-electrical circuit with an uninterrupted current. There are tremendous dampening and inhibiting mechanisms to maintain equilibrium and a sense of well being so specific valences are easily confounded and difficult to research. However, understanding this circuitry reduces the number of potential reactions into these categories.
Integration
Each of these networks is still part of the larger network of the mind. The corpus collosum is the primary integrative body of the brain. Because each of the needs networks, themselves have inter-brain connectivity, defects in the corpus collosum can affect the capacity to have single needs acknowledged or satisfied. The negative effects are amplified when cross-network amplifications are inhibited by impaired connectivity. Lynn Paul and her colleagues (Apr. 2007) have drawn vital connections to malformations of the corpus collosum and a number of psychiatric problems such as autism, A.D.H.D., schizophrenia and bipolar.
Many experiences and expressions emerge from integrated functions of the different networks. I will call this Needs Network Amplification (NNA). Trust, for example, is based on the need of the spiritual network to believe, which is then connected to the emotional network need for interpersonal attachment. The need to believe in something becomes the need to believe in someone, which is then amplified with the need to belong with or connect to an intimate social network. This integration can then be attached to the physical bonding networks of sexual function to form the very powerful romantic love. When faith and sociality are combined (trust) with intellectual networks we have a high-valence learning environment or a powerful spiritual orator.
What of the impact of the physical needs network interactions with other needs networks? Robert Brummer notes the powerful connections of the “brain-gut axis” “describing the bidirectional communication pathways connecting cognitive and emotional centers in the brain with neuroendocrine centers, the enteric nervous system and the immune system” (p.98). This model offers explanations for the high comorbidity of affective and psychiatric disorders with GI disorders. This also hints at the nutritional components of human physical need with the intricate network mechanisms which allow serotonin formation across the blood-brain barrier.
The more integrated the needs-satisfaction network, the more powerful the effect on well-being will be (both positive and negative). If any part, of any of the networks is impaired or underdeveloped, substituting behaviors take place. In this state, the integrated networks are activated, but the valence is low, so satisfaction is only minimally experienced or not at all. These minimally satisfying substitutions do not signal a need for change, they signal a need for more of the substitution to satisfy. I suggest that this mechanism is the source of addiction in all its forms.
Conclusion
There is much more to discuss and study in detailing the integration and satisfaction of physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual needs networks. The impact of needs network application is expandable to all forms of human experience. Understanding the impact of needs conflict and satisfaction will offer infinite insight into affective and psychiatric disorder with new directions in therapeutic technique. This is in no way a complete or comprehensive explanation of physiological needs manifestations, but it sets the stage for my own future research and development.
References
Neurological disorders can instruct us on specific functions of the brain and nervous system. However, if we do not have a reasonable understanding of integrative system functions, we are much less likely to address the root causes and what can be done to prevent or even cure the disorders. I propose a multi-dimensional theory of encompassing needs and their impact on the structures and functions of the brain. Physical, spiritual, intellectual, and emotional brain functions each have associated and interdependent needs. They require synchronous and balanced satisfaction in all areas to achieve physiological wellness. I will discuss the physiological impact of the satisfaction or deprivation of those needs in a systemic context.
Individual Needs
I have posited in other papers the role of fundamental human needs in producing individual well-being as well as the impact of those needs in shaping human sociality from family life to global politics and economics. Now I get to the functional origin of all those complex systems, the human mind.
Each of our needs categories has a different region and/or network of operations within the central nervous system. Our physical needs are indicated, sought, and satisfied via our physical brain networks. We all know that we need food, clothing, and shelter to survive. Also, in order for our species to survive, we need to procreate. We are biologically imbedded with the drive to survive. Most every area of biological research has addressed these complex interactions of our physiological compulsion to eat, “nest,” procreate, and defend. However, on the microcellular level, we also have the physical need for adequate structures for biochemical and bioelectrical processing. Foreign or genetic interference with these processes can manifest a spectrum of illness and disorder.
From an evolutionist perspective, those needs are responsible for our species-specific traits and behaviors. However, those are not the only needs that influence our traits and behaviors.
Emotional brain networks are motivated by the need to function in a system larger than self. As, per Systems Theory (Bertalanffy, 1965) all molecules and organisms function within a system. Humans, as part of those systems function toward increasing the order of those systems. Natural, open systems, such as ecological biology reproduce, perpetuate, expand, and evolve systems effectiveness.
Cooperative sociality is the ultimate power to expand system functions. These functions are developed and improved in infant-parenting interactions that develop or inhibit the efficacy of future social interactions. Swain and his colleagues (2007) have recently done important work in expanding John Bowlby’s attachment theory of a “universal human need to form affect laden bonds” (p.263). They detailed the complex interactions of the mesocorticalimbic and the nigrostriatal dopamine systems in reward behavior motivating responses to infant cues such as crying. They are “important in activating healthy maternal reward and motivational circuits” (p.268). These circuits, however, can be “hijacked” by cocaine use, which substitutes all those emotional responses, and minimizes the natural intrinsic rewards. Lack of appropriate emotional response from his addicted, unresponsive mother reduces the child’s future capacity to respond emotionally to others.
People with organized attachment patterns showed increased activity in the right amygdala, left hippocampus, and right inferior frontal gyrus. Areas of social and emotional empathy activation are in the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporal cortex.
Spiritual brain networks form and respond to idealizations, which are responsible for planning, setting goals, inquiry, and all forms of symbolic creativity. We all have the spiritual need to imagine, believe, and create. The ultimate satisfaction of this need is to imagine one thing, believe in it, and see the fruits or evidence of that belief manifested in physical creation or experience. The motivator for that satisfaction is the deeper, spiritual need to understand abstract ideals via interpretation of internal sensory stimuli translated to outward reality.
The ideal of the perfect self is universally acknowledged to exist outside of self. Therefore, spiritual experiences often include the suppression of self-awareness and a connection to a transcendental self of an ultimately idealistic nature. Johnstone and Glass (2008) created a basic model of spiritual activity in the brain where “individuals may experience transcendence (feelings of universal unity and decreased sense of self) by minimizing right parietal functions through conscious effort, as in meditation” (p.871). The also proposed the need for further understanding the role of the thalamus’ attentional abilities and the emotional impact of the limbic system in spiritual experiences.
Emotions are internal stimuli, which the spiritual network has a need to comprehend and integrate, so emotional and spiritual needs have many overlapping circuits.
Simply put, we need ideals to become real. Balanced satisfaction of this need produces evolutionary effects. Dissatisfaction produces intellectual reinterpretation of ideals.
Intellectual brain networks have the primary need to understand and apply knowledge through chains of logic based on the analysis of external sensory stimuli (versus the internal sensory analysis of the spiritual network). Spiritual inquiry and creativity is an independent precursor to intellectual knowledge or intellectual knowledge can motivate spiritual inquiry. When used in a cycle of discovery, spiritual, physical, and intellectual knowledge, effectively integrated produces understanding of universal ideal.
On a more basic level, our intellectual network gives us sound and analysis necessary in language, sight analysis for vision and recognition, numbers and logic, and all of our conscious learning and interpretation of the world around us.
Physiological Impact
The satisfaction of each of these needs can be monitored through analysis of inductive valences. Dissatisfaction or deprivation causes negative valence in proportion to the force of potential need an experience produces. Need-satisfying stimuli and experience has a positive valence. The integrated satisfaction of all needs creates a continuous chemical-electrical circuit with an uninterrupted current. There are tremendous dampening and inhibiting mechanisms to maintain equilibrium and a sense of well being so specific valences are easily confounded and difficult to research. However, understanding this circuitry reduces the number of potential reactions into these categories.
Integration
Each of these networks is still part of the larger network of the mind. The corpus collosum is the primary integrative body of the brain. Because each of the needs networks, themselves have inter-brain connectivity, defects in the corpus collosum can affect the capacity to have single needs acknowledged or satisfied. The negative effects are amplified when cross-network amplifications are inhibited by impaired connectivity. Lynn Paul and her colleagues (Apr. 2007) have drawn vital connections to malformations of the corpus collosum and a number of psychiatric problems such as autism, A.D.H.D., schizophrenia and bipolar.
Many experiences and expressions emerge from integrated functions of the different networks. I will call this Needs Network Amplification (NNA). Trust, for example, is based on the need of the spiritual network to believe, which is then connected to the emotional network need for interpersonal attachment. The need to believe in something becomes the need to believe in someone, which is then amplified with the need to belong with or connect to an intimate social network. This integration can then be attached to the physical bonding networks of sexual function to form the very powerful romantic love. When faith and sociality are combined (trust) with intellectual networks we have a high-valence learning environment or a powerful spiritual orator.
What of the impact of the physical needs network interactions with other needs networks? Robert Brummer notes the powerful connections of the “brain-gut axis” “describing the bidirectional communication pathways connecting cognitive and emotional centers in the brain with neuroendocrine centers, the enteric nervous system and the immune system” (p.98). This model offers explanations for the high comorbidity of affective and psychiatric disorders with GI disorders. This also hints at the nutritional components of human physical need with the intricate network mechanisms which allow serotonin formation across the blood-brain barrier.
The more integrated the needs-satisfaction network, the more powerful the effect on well-being will be (both positive and negative). If any part, of any of the networks is impaired or underdeveloped, substituting behaviors take place. In this state, the integrated networks are activated, but the valence is low, so satisfaction is only minimally experienced or not at all. These minimally satisfying substitutions do not signal a need for change, they signal a need for more of the substitution to satisfy. I suggest that this mechanism is the source of addiction in all its forms.
Conclusion
There is much more to discuss and study in detailing the integration and satisfaction of physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual needs networks. The impact of needs network application is expandable to all forms of human experience. Understanding the impact of needs conflict and satisfaction will offer infinite insight into affective and psychiatric disorder with new directions in therapeutic technique. This is in no way a complete or comprehensive explanation of physiological needs manifestations, but it sets the stage for my own future research and development.
References
Brummer, R.J. (May 2005). Nutritional modulation of the “brain-gut axis.” Scandanavia journal of nutrition 49:98-105
Johnstone, B & Glass, B (2008). Support for a neuropsychological model of spirituality in persons with traumatic brain injury. Zygon 43: 861-874
Paul, Lynn et al (Apr 2007). Agenesis of the corpus collosum: genetic, developmental and functional aspects of connectivity. Nature reviews: neuroscience, 8: 287-299.
Swain, J.E. et al (2007). Brain basis of early parent interactions: psychology, physiology, and in vivo functional neuroimaging studies. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 48:262-28707 February 2011
A Little Insight
Reviewing much of my work and recalling interactions with teachers and students, I have noticed that the things I have written do not at all reflect the immense struggle and agonized thought that has gone into generating these writings. I have struggled to conform to assignments and have narrowly touched on the required topics and nearly rejected my instructors' assignments to write a paper for my own purposes and have still received exemplary grades because even the teacher does not recognize my rebellious internal conflict.
Though I feel like I am going against standard knowledge or opposing perspectives--being non-conformist--my objective is to bring all knowledge into conformity with a single philosophy. It is a harmonizing philosophy. Maybe that is why the conflict cannot be sensed. Maybe it is the diluted emotional nature of intellectual language. Know this, as easy as this is to read, it has not been easy to write.
Though I feel like I am going against standard knowledge or opposing perspectives--being non-conformist--my objective is to bring all knowledge into conformity with a single philosophy. It is a harmonizing philosophy. Maybe that is why the conflict cannot be sensed. Maybe it is the diluted emotional nature of intellectual language. Know this, as easy as this is to read, it has not been easy to write.
24 January 2011
The Power of Need: Foundations of Social Structures
Power manifests both individually and socially and it can be productive or dysfunctional. Social and individual power structures are dysfunctional when they do not effectively meet individual needs or even exploit the individual. The source of power arises from the dependency that need creates. What one person cannot do, or cannot provide, nature or other people must provide. The more a person is able to provide for himself, the more powerful he is and the less dependent he is upon others. Nonetheless, the interdependent nature of human needs requires some level of human interaction.
Individual Power. The centers of individual power are charisma (includes talent), intelligence, strength, sex, skills, and tools. Status influences access to individual power centers. The individual has the power to form and select groups of association, which will affect power status and the ability to influence social structure. This power arises from the ability or the perceived ability to provide needs or perceived needs to others. The more fundamental the need he provides, the more powerful he or the organization he creates will be.
Thye, Willer, and Markovsky offered proofs for these relationships with Status Value Theory, which is a synthesis of Status Characteristics Theory and Network Exchange Theory, which is derived from the highly mathematical Game Theory. “The experiment showed that status broadly impacts the use of power and related phenomena in negotiated exchange…The implication is that power is driven more by the social influence of high status individuals than by [material utilitarian benefits offered]” (2006).
The individual must be understood as the powerful center of sociological structure. For, as Locke postulated, no government authority has legitimacy if the people do not consent to its authority. Leaders may be brutal and dictatorial, but they can only rule as long as people are willing to tolerate that sort of authority. As the history of nations shows, the people will attempt to overthrow oppressors and powerful individuals mobilize uprisings.
Social Power. The three centers of social power are family, government, religion, and business. In addition to creating a structure for the fulfillment of individual needs, social institutions facilitate or limit individual power for the benefit of competing individuals or groups. These power centers compete with one another to provide individual needs, or perceived needs to people and groups. This power becomes dysfunctional when it exploits one group to their harm for the benefit of another group or individual. Furthermore, an organization, which seeks to provide all human needs by monopolizing power centers into one ruling force, has immense potential to abuse power and become dysfunctional. Therefore, individuals and masses are wise to require that government not have sole control of religious, business, or educational centers of power to preserve individual power and liberty.
Family. Family culture is the location of cultural development. Cultures, like children, are profoundly influenced by the experiences of their early development. Personalities and patterns of behavior become ingrained which can become very difficult obstacles to overcome in developing into a successful community or nation on the world stage.
Multiple studies conclude that maltreatment of children creates deleterious long-term effects on children, thus impacting society as they mature (e.g. Maschi et al.). I propose that individuals and families are the constituents of nations and governments. Therefore, study of the patterns and practices we see in families can be applied to social institutions and cultures for increased perspective on healthy and unhealthy child as well as cultural development. Child maltreatment is defined neglect as well as physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. Social maltreatment parallels these categories in the form of inadequate social structure, economic exploitation, civil rights abuse, and A-group domination of relatively helpless B-groups, respectively.
Children who are victims of maltreatment spend a lifetime trying to overcome the negative effects and rarely develop their full potential. Exceptions are the result of intervention from outside the family. Tina Maschi and her colleagues drew the correlation between child development and social work. “Social work prevention and intervention strategies should actively address post-trauma emotional, behavioral, and social residue that has been consistently shown to negatively affect youths and their families and communities” (2009). Likewise, other cultures or outside groups have a moral responsibility to intervene on behalf of the citizens of abusive governments or members of dysfunctional social structures.
Actor Functions. Each power center has actor functions by individuals, bureaucratic leaders, and masses. Every religion, government, business, and family has a founder or a very small group of organizing individuals. Therefore, the individual is the phase-one actor function. As an organization becomes established, policy and procedure becomes the ruling force as enacted by bureaucratic individuals as a phase-two actor function. The third phase of actor functions is massification. This is when individuals are no longer individuated, and the individual becomes expendable in a group organization. At this point individual needs and acknowledgement are minimized in the organization and individual actions become removed from personal and accountable thought. In this phase, only when the masses act as a unified group, will individual needs be acknowledged within the organization.
Power Keys. Power keys can be used to the harm or benefit of individuals and groups, cooperatively or competitively. Because all power forms can all be activated by economic resource allocation, money is a power key. Money itself is not a power, but how groups and individuals use money affects their power. Likewise, the control of information and ideas is a power key. The capacity to produce and distribute materials and products also affects individual and group power because it is the ability to meet human needs. The final power key is authority. General acceptance of structure (norms and laws) and leaders creates social legitimacy and gives the actors within social structures the power to function.
Influence and Force. There are three forms of power: influence, force, and withholding. Influence is the ability to shape thinking, behavior, and social development through ideas, products, distribution, and physical contact (loving or violent). Force is the coercive application of influence—the application or threat of negative consequence for non-compliance with a powerful individual or group.
Vehicles of Influence. The vehicles of influence are used to manipulate pleasure and love. They are physical contact, media, and education. People with high power status exert more influence because of their ability to persuade others by virtue of their position. By the same token, they can create status by exerting influence. Creating status or exerting influence is achieved through communication media, whether face to face and group communication, recorded audio, print, electronic media, and video. The more access a person has to the variety of media, the more extensive his influence will be. All forms of influential communication can be used to educate. Therefore, the power of media is the power to educate or distort; to inform or misinform. Non-verbal communication in the form of physical contact or activity-associated bonding increases the influence that communications and education have. From a handshake, to maternal bonding, to sexual intercourse the human need for human contact brings the power of influence to those who satisfy those needs.
Meaning. The vehicles of influence can be summarized as the power to generate meaning. How needs are defined, interpreted, and met controls human ability to satisfy needs successfully or dysfunctionally. False meanings bring false satisfaction, which creates dysfunction. There is much to be said about the social significance of meaning that is beyond the scope of this paper. I will suffice with a summary by Michael Hughes:
Evidence is presented that people experience lowered affect in some challenging and stressful situations that simultaneously generate meanings that enhance the quality of their lives, and that experiences of high affect along with impoverished meanings produce low quality of life. This strongly suggests that meaning may be a more fundamental dimension of life quality than is affect. Meanings may also enhance the quality of life by motivating people's involvement in activities that promote social integration and the quality of social relationships (2006).
Vehicles of Force. The vehicles of force manipulate pain and fear. Military and police force, or the threat of use of force is a strong means of social control. It can be useful and effective in controlling the behavior of large groups. Their presence is one of the primary ways a government fills the need for individual protection. The possession of strength or weaponry by individuals, groups, and governments increases force capacity. However, force is the power most easily abused. When force is used to suppress a group of individuals, to their harm rather than protection, a powerful group or individual is performing dysfunctionally. Fear of force is the primary use of force, as the threat of inflicting pain or death tends to minimize the need to actually inflict it. Terror is an extreme form of fear that can be used by smaller groups to gain an advantage against the superior strength of dominant groups.
Withholding. Because needs (both actual and relative/perceived) drive all human interaction, withholding from individuals and groups can be a means of exerting power as much as providing needs. As noted earlier, an individual’s ability to meet needs affects power status. Groups who prevent other groups from receiving or meeting needs are exerting dominating power.
Transition
The three schools of thought in contemporary sociology fail to acknowledge the full spectrum of human social interaction as a whole process, from the micro to the macro and from history to the future. Transitionalism seeks to understand the formation of social structures through complex interactions of individuals, families, and institutions as originating from human needs conflicts and resulting power sources, both functionally and dysfunctionally
The power of change originates with ideas in the form of ideologies, or in the form of production or products (invention) through any of the vehicles of power by any of the institutions of society. This is similar to W.F. Ogburn’s view of material and non-material culture (Schaefer 2008). All ideas and actions originate from powerful individuals. (They are powerful because of their ability to generate and implement ideas.) The workings of society which sociology tries to understand are based on dynamic conflict between competing interests and conflicting ideologies among centers of power. There are two types of transition: revolution and evolution.
Revolution is marked by punctuated conflict between the dominant group and the sub-dominant group seeking a dramatic change in a concentrated time. When the sub-dominant group becomes dominant, the punctuated conflict that polarized the groups remains intact. The lack of inter-group cohesion creates a cycle of revolution.
Evolution. Meanings change as different individuals and groups express and implement ideas. While the changes may be dramatic, the conflict is less punctuated by group-against-group interaction and a variety of subgroups adopt new meanings and applications to form new cultural norms. This is accelerated through multi-cultural amalgamation.
Transition my fail, in which case, a living culture will decay and expire. Examples of such are the Roman and Egyptian Empires. While we still have many elements of their culture in Western Civilization, they are historical in their influence and not vital (living) elements in a continuing culture. Nonetheless, cultural descendancy (genetic and cultural heritage) has a powerful impact on the formation of new societies.
Stages. There are four phases of transition: stasis, discontent, resistance and resolution, which takes one of three forms: schism, amalgamation, or extinction. Social stability is temporary. No matter how well or balanced needs are met, even in a perfect world, there will be people who would become discontent with perfection (because perfection never includes self-centered indulgence). Therefore, competing ideologies will emerge. The selfish individual will miss the connection with society and seek to create a group that believes in and supports his selfish pursuits. Because no individual wants to be a pariah, he will proselyte his resistance bringing a rebirth of deviance and conflict. Eventually the deviant culture will become so successful in its proselytizing efforts that it will become the dominant culture. If the ideas that culture promotes do not support the universal truth of balanced needs fulfillment, it will destroy itself, and the culture will become extinct.
Conclusion
While human needs in the four categories of spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional are universal, the power to meet and/or distort those needs and their meanings creates conflict within social structures which are formed to meet those needs. Organization consistently arises from individuals who utilize personal power to form social centers of power or institutions, which evolve bureaucratic and mass functions distinct from the individual(s) original intent. Those actor functions have the ability to perform functionally to meet needs or dysfunctionally exploit needs in imbalanced power transactions.
This paper has not elaborated the specific needs or the totality of their implications, but provides a rich field for future work that diverges from relativistic culture and narrow conflict models in sociological thought.
Individual Power. The centers of individual power are charisma (includes talent), intelligence, strength, sex, skills, and tools. Status influences access to individual power centers. The individual has the power to form and select groups of association, which will affect power status and the ability to influence social structure. This power arises from the ability or the perceived ability to provide needs or perceived needs to others. The more fundamental the need he provides, the more powerful he or the organization he creates will be.
Thye, Willer, and Markovsky offered proofs for these relationships with Status Value Theory, which is a synthesis of Status Characteristics Theory and Network Exchange Theory, which is derived from the highly mathematical Game Theory. “The experiment showed that status broadly impacts the use of power and related phenomena in negotiated exchange…The implication is that power is driven more by the social influence of high status individuals than by [material utilitarian benefits offered]” (2006).
The individual must be understood as the powerful center of sociological structure. For, as Locke postulated, no government authority has legitimacy if the people do not consent to its authority. Leaders may be brutal and dictatorial, but they can only rule as long as people are willing to tolerate that sort of authority. As the history of nations shows, the people will attempt to overthrow oppressors and powerful individuals mobilize uprisings.
Social Power. The three centers of social power are family, government, religion, and business. In addition to creating a structure for the fulfillment of individual needs, social institutions facilitate or limit individual power for the benefit of competing individuals or groups. These power centers compete with one another to provide individual needs, or perceived needs to people and groups. This power becomes dysfunctional when it exploits one group to their harm for the benefit of another group or individual. Furthermore, an organization, which seeks to provide all human needs by monopolizing power centers into one ruling force, has immense potential to abuse power and become dysfunctional. Therefore, individuals and masses are wise to require that government not have sole control of religious, business, or educational centers of power to preserve individual power and liberty.
Family. Family culture is the location of cultural development. Cultures, like children, are profoundly influenced by the experiences of their early development. Personalities and patterns of behavior become ingrained which can become very difficult obstacles to overcome in developing into a successful community or nation on the world stage.
Multiple studies conclude that maltreatment of children creates deleterious long-term effects on children, thus impacting society as they mature (e.g. Maschi et al.). I propose that individuals and families are the constituents of nations and governments. Therefore, study of the patterns and practices we see in families can be applied to social institutions and cultures for increased perspective on healthy and unhealthy child as well as cultural development. Child maltreatment is defined neglect as well as physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. Social maltreatment parallels these categories in the form of inadequate social structure, economic exploitation, civil rights abuse, and A-group domination of relatively helpless B-groups, respectively.
Children who are victims of maltreatment spend a lifetime trying to overcome the negative effects and rarely develop their full potential. Exceptions are the result of intervention from outside the family. Tina Maschi and her colleagues drew the correlation between child development and social work. “Social work prevention and intervention strategies should actively address post-trauma emotional, behavioral, and social residue that has been consistently shown to negatively affect youths and their families and communities” (2009). Likewise, other cultures or outside groups have a moral responsibility to intervene on behalf of the citizens of abusive governments or members of dysfunctional social structures.
Actor Functions. Each power center has actor functions by individuals, bureaucratic leaders, and masses. Every religion, government, business, and family has a founder or a very small group of organizing individuals. Therefore, the individual is the phase-one actor function. As an organization becomes established, policy and procedure becomes the ruling force as enacted by bureaucratic individuals as a phase-two actor function. The third phase of actor functions is massification. This is when individuals are no longer individuated, and the individual becomes expendable in a group organization. At this point individual needs and acknowledgement are minimized in the organization and individual actions become removed from personal and accountable thought. In this phase, only when the masses act as a unified group, will individual needs be acknowledged within the organization.
Power Keys. Power keys can be used to the harm or benefit of individuals and groups, cooperatively or competitively. Because all power forms can all be activated by economic resource allocation, money is a power key. Money itself is not a power, but how groups and individuals use money affects their power. Likewise, the control of information and ideas is a power key. The capacity to produce and distribute materials and products also affects individual and group power because it is the ability to meet human needs. The final power key is authority. General acceptance of structure (norms and laws) and leaders creates social legitimacy and gives the actors within social structures the power to function.
Influence and Force. There are three forms of power: influence, force, and withholding. Influence is the ability to shape thinking, behavior, and social development through ideas, products, distribution, and physical contact (loving or violent). Force is the coercive application of influence—the application or threat of negative consequence for non-compliance with a powerful individual or group.
Vehicles of Influence. The vehicles of influence are used to manipulate pleasure and love. They are physical contact, media, and education. People with high power status exert more influence because of their ability to persuade others by virtue of their position. By the same token, they can create status by exerting influence. Creating status or exerting influence is achieved through communication media, whether face to face and group communication, recorded audio, print, electronic media, and video. The more access a person has to the variety of media, the more extensive his influence will be. All forms of influential communication can be used to educate. Therefore, the power of media is the power to educate or distort; to inform or misinform. Non-verbal communication in the form of physical contact or activity-associated bonding increases the influence that communications and education have. From a handshake, to maternal bonding, to sexual intercourse the human need for human contact brings the power of influence to those who satisfy those needs.
Meaning. The vehicles of influence can be summarized as the power to generate meaning. How needs are defined, interpreted, and met controls human ability to satisfy needs successfully or dysfunctionally. False meanings bring false satisfaction, which creates dysfunction. There is much to be said about the social significance of meaning that is beyond the scope of this paper. I will suffice with a summary by Michael Hughes:
Evidence is presented that people experience lowered affect in some challenging and stressful situations that simultaneously generate meanings that enhance the quality of their lives, and that experiences of high affect along with impoverished meanings produce low quality of life. This strongly suggests that meaning may be a more fundamental dimension of life quality than is affect. Meanings may also enhance the quality of life by motivating people's involvement in activities that promote social integration and the quality of social relationships (2006).
Vehicles of Force. The vehicles of force manipulate pain and fear. Military and police force, or the threat of use of force is a strong means of social control. It can be useful and effective in controlling the behavior of large groups. Their presence is one of the primary ways a government fills the need for individual protection. The possession of strength or weaponry by individuals, groups, and governments increases force capacity. However, force is the power most easily abused. When force is used to suppress a group of individuals, to their harm rather than protection, a powerful group or individual is performing dysfunctionally. Fear of force is the primary use of force, as the threat of inflicting pain or death tends to minimize the need to actually inflict it. Terror is an extreme form of fear that can be used by smaller groups to gain an advantage against the superior strength of dominant groups.
Withholding. Because needs (both actual and relative/perceived) drive all human interaction, withholding from individuals and groups can be a means of exerting power as much as providing needs. As noted earlier, an individual’s ability to meet needs affects power status. Groups who prevent other groups from receiving or meeting needs are exerting dominating power.
Transition
The three schools of thought in contemporary sociology fail to acknowledge the full spectrum of human social interaction as a whole process, from the micro to the macro and from history to the future. Transitionalism seeks to understand the formation of social structures through complex interactions of individuals, families, and institutions as originating from human needs conflicts and resulting power sources, both functionally and dysfunctionally
The power of change originates with ideas in the form of ideologies, or in the form of production or products (invention) through any of the vehicles of power by any of the institutions of society. This is similar to W.F. Ogburn’s view of material and non-material culture (Schaefer 2008). All ideas and actions originate from powerful individuals. (They are powerful because of their ability to generate and implement ideas.) The workings of society which sociology tries to understand are based on dynamic conflict between competing interests and conflicting ideologies among centers of power. There are two types of transition: revolution and evolution.
Revolution is marked by punctuated conflict between the dominant group and the sub-dominant group seeking a dramatic change in a concentrated time. When the sub-dominant group becomes dominant, the punctuated conflict that polarized the groups remains intact. The lack of inter-group cohesion creates a cycle of revolution.
Evolution. Meanings change as different individuals and groups express and implement ideas. While the changes may be dramatic, the conflict is less punctuated by group-against-group interaction and a variety of subgroups adopt new meanings and applications to form new cultural norms. This is accelerated through multi-cultural amalgamation.
Transition my fail, in which case, a living culture will decay and expire. Examples of such are the Roman and Egyptian Empires. While we still have many elements of their culture in Western Civilization, they are historical in their influence and not vital (living) elements in a continuing culture. Nonetheless, cultural descendancy (genetic and cultural heritage) has a powerful impact on the formation of new societies.
Stages. There are four phases of transition: stasis, discontent, resistance and resolution, which takes one of three forms: schism, amalgamation, or extinction. Social stability is temporary. No matter how well or balanced needs are met, even in a perfect world, there will be people who would become discontent with perfection (because perfection never includes self-centered indulgence). Therefore, competing ideologies will emerge. The selfish individual will miss the connection with society and seek to create a group that believes in and supports his selfish pursuits. Because no individual wants to be a pariah, he will proselyte his resistance bringing a rebirth of deviance and conflict. Eventually the deviant culture will become so successful in its proselytizing efforts that it will become the dominant culture. If the ideas that culture promotes do not support the universal truth of balanced needs fulfillment, it will destroy itself, and the culture will become extinct.
Conclusion
While human needs in the four categories of spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional are universal, the power to meet and/or distort those needs and their meanings creates conflict within social structures which are formed to meet those needs. Organization consistently arises from individuals who utilize personal power to form social centers of power or institutions, which evolve bureaucratic and mass functions distinct from the individual(s) original intent. Those actor functions have the ability to perform functionally to meet needs or dysfunctionally exploit needs in imbalanced power transactions.
This paper has not elaborated the specific needs or the totality of their implications, but provides a rich field for future work that diverges from relativistic culture and narrow conflict models in sociological thought.
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