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, 5^th 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.

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

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, 48:262-287

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.

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.

Freedom in Compulsory Education?

Michael Goodwin, in discussing the freedom to fail, applies the issue of entitlement to education, in that high school, degrees are given to those who have not mastered basic skills. I agree that unearned diplomas devalue the currency of education as much as a government bailout does the economy, however, there is a much deeper issue here.

Education today equates standards, or sameness, with fairness and the myth of equality. All men are created equal in the eyes of God, but they all have unique traits, abilities, interests, and ambitions. To avoid philosophical contradiction we must clearly distinguish equality of opportunity from material, intellectual, or biological equality. What if somebody wants to be rich and somebody else does not? Shouldn’t they have the right to decide that for themselves?Should people have freedom to personally excel or to refuse “progress” dictated by others?

Brilliant, ambitious, resourceful, or talented people are born into every social strata. Education will benefit America best when those people are given an equal opportunity to excel to their potential. However, in the contemporary system, children are all expected to meet a singular standard, which does not challenge the gifted, while burdening the moderately capable in subjects which are minimally relevant to the variety of student interests and potential vocations. How different would education be if students were given the opportunity to achieve their own maximum potential?

If children are taught based on their interests and abilities they will be motivated to learn and be much less likely to fail. Should they be sheltered from the consequences of their decision to reject their maximum potential? Failure for the sake of failure is no noble principle, and public educators are right to do everything they can to help a student succeed, but the right to determine one’s own destiny is the heart of American freedom. If your pursuit leads to failure, you have the right to learn from it and try again. If you do not learn from your failures, you will never be able to achieve your greatest potential. The problem with the notion of failure in contemporary education is that it is labeled as an end result, not a means to learning. We must teach children to fail early and fail often, in the pursuit of success—according to their own conscientious desires for and definitions of success.

Education, like government, should be of the people, for the people, and by the people. The less our government reflects that philosophy, the less our public education system will mirror citizen independence, and the more compulsion will be required in compulsory education. Compulsion is the opposite of freedom. When governments hinder the flow of knowledge or proscribe demanding educational goals (such as standardized tests and consuming curriculum) to the general population, they restrict natural human liberty. We only need the freedom to fail if it is part of our freedom to determine our individual destiny as parents, students, and educators.

Academic Repression

As a thirty-eight year-old woman I am still working to get a college degree. For many years I avoided getting a degree because I did not feel like I needed a formal school environment to learn or a piece of paper to prove--to myself or anyone else--that I was an educated person. My thoughts and attitudes are evident in a discussion I had with my sociology teacher after an impassioned posting I had written for assigned class discussion. (A form of the original posting assignment is the blog post titled Utopian Realism.) His comments sparked some of the repressed animosity I have toward academia and modern education and science practice and philosophy.

Thank you for your comments Janika. Please remember that the discipline of sociology is one of the social sciences, like history, psychology, or economics. Issues of social class are as fundamental to the discipline of sociology as the personality is to the discipline of psychology. All people have different views on these issues, but few examine them at the level of a college student. Our discussions in the class are academic, and the focus is on gaining a better understanding of the material, and is not aimed at influencing beliefs.

When you read your textbook, please notice that there is no discussion on what is "right" or "wrong." Various theories are discussed (conflict, symbolic interaction, functionalism) but none of the theories are "right or wrong." Theories simply represent the different ways we perceive the world, and our perceptions of the world will generally follow one of the theoretical perspectives. Our biases are generally formed by our world view, and one of the objectives of the class is to help students in recognizing their own theoretical perspectives, and the social forces that goes into shaping their perspective.

My response went something like this:
Thank you for your response. The way I see it, all sciences, even biology and astrophysics (a particular favorite of mine) are filled with people who have a biased belief. We are all seeking answers to questions about life and we all have specific goals in our pursuit of understanding. I will not pretend to be unbiased.

Whatever the "objective” of the class I have my own objectives for my education. My original purpose in returning to school was to study physical sciences and be a secondary school educator because I love science. Scientific method never refers to theories as "ways we perceive the world." Theories are something we are supposed to form from conclusions based on thorough testing to deem them right or wrong. However, because academia is as dogmatic as religion, and scientists are as emotionally attached to their theories as a zealot, they revise and append where they should re-orient and abandon inconclusive or incomplete theories. Re-defining the word "theory" in sociology is the ultimate example of this.

Pre-computer age sociology could not come close to rationalizing the complex equations and computations that data-based sociology requires. Because no theories could really be proven, could not really be classed as a science. Therefore, the approach you mention was appropriate to that time, but only qualified sociology as a pseudoscience. We have moved far past that. However, our entire course never required us to even read about data gathering and statistical method.

Science is the physical means of discovering universal law. I reject moral and cultural relativism. Universal truth is to be discovered by every person of every culture, and none of them have the whole of it. Studying all of them helps us uncover the pattern of foundational truth. Observing the results of personal and social behavior verifies or discredits the validity of the beliefs that undergird cultures. Strong, productive, and lasting cultures are made so because their philosophies and practices utilize some portion of universal truth (both ideological and scientific).

This, to me, is the purpose of sociology. That is nothing like anything I have read in the textbook. But it is what motivates me and makes me able to retain the quantities of knowledge that such a pursuit requires. I am not concerned about who agrees with me or how I am graded, but by sharing my ideas, I hope to open minds to non-standard perspectives and hope to find other students who challenge my perspectives with their own well-developed thinking.

As adults with significant life experience this format is for us to learn from each other as much as from our instructors. I want my fellow students to have the best quality education possible, regardless of the ascribed status of the university. We do not have to act stupid because we are getting and online education instead of a Harvard education.

You are right. Issues of social class are fundamental to our discussion here. I do not belong to the class of elite professors from prestigious universities who elevate themselves with their "peer reviewed" pompousness like the ancient priest class of middle civilization. I am a free and independent daughter of the information age. I don't care if I have a degree, but I will get one, so that, should my husband become unemployed again, I will be able to help my family, because I belong to a society that expects certain things, and I conform where I must.

Those who don't believe in absolute truth will never find it. Those who do believe at least have a chance of finding it, should it really exist. I will keep looking

I responded further to another student's reply.

My problem is not so much what we are supposed to talk about but the hidden curriculum evident in what we are NOT supposed to talk about. We read about family this week. That is the vital and fundamental unit of society, but not a single assignment in the whole course addresses it. Sociology is nothing without a firm understanding of familial impact on the greater society. If however, the importance and impact of family is minimized in education, it elevates the status of education as the fundamental unit of society and cultural cohesion. From a conflict perspective, it is about a power struggle for dominating control over the development of young minds.

And what about religion? That is another center of influence and power. If our education does not reinforce the value of religion while pointing to its own importance, it is again reinforcing its power as the central influence in our lives and minimizing religion's importance and impact on social development. The text pointed these things out, but we are not to discuss them to reinforce that learning. It is like the pundits after the State of the Union Address. We all listen to it, but then they spend two hours telling us what we heard, reinforcing the points they want us to remember, sometimes undermining (by skipping over) some of the most important statements the President was trying to make.

Knowledge is power. Who is directing the flow of information? How can we take responsibility for our own education to retain (or gain) our free and independent status?

Economic Ecosystems: Balancing Interdependant Globalization

Introduction
Natural systems tend toward increasing order. I will demonstrate how human production, trade, and economy are consistent with the evolution and development of natural ecosystems and the degree of inevitability of increasing global interdependence of the human ecosystem. The dynamics of fluctuation and stabilization found in natural systems can also be applied to patterns of human economy and social developent. This is because man is a part of nature and subject to its laws.

Historically, primitive human thought, production, and economy has been viewed as fundamentally different from current motives and modes. Because of this Heath Pearson (2007) states that anthropology, psychology, and economics which were once part of the same field of study have become totally disparate fields, “creating a discursive vacuum within which Homo paleoeconomicus [the anthropological primitive man with little real sense of capitalistic awareness] has proliferated without contest.”

General System Theory (GST), on the other hand, provides the hope of a common foundation upon which all sciences can build for a more throrough understanding of the processes which lead to the evolutionary development of social and economic systems. GST was first outlined by Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1969). “There are systems of equations describing the competition of animal and plant species in nature. But it appears that the same systems of equations apply in certain fields in physical chemistry and in economics as well” (p.33).

I will discuss how human economic systems limit themselves through competition while expanding through cooperation allowing for growth and increased complexity

Competing Forces and the Balance of Power
Just as ecosystems experience dynamic equilibrium in predator-prey populations, historical capitalist economy experiences fluctuations in supply and demand. However, pre-industrial theorists could not have concieved the power of human innovation in production and distribution to alter naturistic and economic eco-systems. It was not until cybernetics and information technology began to be studied that we understood the power of networks and the teleology of natrural systems; that systems could “learn” and had “purpose;” that the end was greater than the sum of its parts; that despite the appearance of randomness, systems tend to increase order (Bertalanffy).

However, the process of increasing order (meaning structure, law, and peaceful cooperation) in civilization, economic development, and politics is nothing like straight-line progression. There are cyclic paterns of accelerated growth, stasis, decline, and dormancy, or even system death which fertilizes the birth of new systems as evidenced by the rise and death of Roman, Egyptian, Mayan, and similarly once great empires and kingdoms, of which only vestiges remain. Yet the monuments of their existence inspire contemporary cultures to build on rediscovered knowledge.

One of the dynamic agents of these cultural cycles is resistance. The strength of one force in an ecosystem generates an equal and opposite reaction. In socio-political contexts the primary resistors are man versus nature, man versus man, and man versus self.

Man v. Wild
The impact of humanity on naturistic ecosystems and global environments is evident even from upper-atmospheric orbit. Though much is said about the negativity of this impact. Few are bold enough to assert that man is an evolved part of nature, endowed by nature with the capacity to utilize and improve upon natural systems. There is a tendency among humans to exploit, deplete, and pollute naturistic systems in adverse ways. Plant and animal populations may even become extinct. However, we must be wise and note that nature has the power to balance these extremes. In fact nature itself has wiped out populations and caused extinctions. Even the tragedy of massive cataclysms such as tsunamis and earthquakes operate to refresh human and animal population.

Another balancing feature of Nature is the natural human endowment of observation and conscience. Humans have evolved to become aware of negative impacts and take corrective action. Buffalo populations nearly wiped out by nineteeth century hunting was recognized and limited by conscientious humans to the point that there are, again, massive herds of wild as well as domesticated bison.

But is man versus wild a zero-sum game where one's gains are another's loss? Is human use of natural resources inherently negative? Or is there a symbiotic flow of needs and fulfillment among humans and nature? I will discuss cooperation and expansion with more detail in a later section.

Man v. Man
Man versus man dynamics are the focus of those with realist perspectives. It can also be defined as idea versus idea. War for the sake of war does not occur within society. Even bar room spats among individuals are not without an initiating ideological conflict. Carl von Clausewitz proposed that “war was merely one means states might employ to achieve objectives set by political authorities” (Viotti 2007 p.166). He acknowledged that military capabilities were multiplied by moral factors—a nation's motivating belief in the justice of their cause, hence their will to act upon it.

The competing interests of diverse states which realists note to be the source of power conflicts are balanced by interdependence among those same states for trade, security, and resources. The extending reach of trade and communication networks is an expanding global ecosystem which has increased that interdependence over the last century. But is there an inevitability to this expansion?

Judith Simmer-Brown (2000) asserts that even modern consumerism in a global economy is not inevitable and can be moderated by better understanding the causal relationships between government subsidy, “market demands,” and corporate prowess then understanding individual responsibility to be prudent consumers.

To say that global markets have nothing to do but expand and increase international power and influence is to reject history as a teacher. Corporate and governmental control of global markets which tend to manipulate conditions and control consumer activities (for consumer “benefit and safety” or not) face increasing consumer resistance with increased power. As seen in past revolutions, individual powerlessness gives way to collaboration among individuals who become a collective resistance movement. The cycle continues as the resistance movement becomes the dominant power, and can eventually become the oppressor to be resisted, kept in check, or overthrown.

As stated earlier, even failed systems can become the fertilizer for new systems which increase order in larger systems. For example, the expanding power and threat of Nazi Germany was the catalyst for worldwide war. It was defeated and that system failed. But Hitler's catastrophe (and immorality) increased human awareness of the need to protect against such destructive powers and philosophies. International security collaborations became standard among powerful nations. Rules of engagement were refined, and preventive measures taken for future security. Thusly, international order increased.

Man v. Self
It is important to note that all systems are made up of individuals, and that there is conflict even within the singular human being. Psychosocial needs may be in conflict with physiological needs. Spiritual needs to act in good conscience conflict with physical satisfaction at the expense of others. (For further discussion on individual human needs and interests, please see the post titled Human Happiness.)

One individual may seek to subject others to his will according to the satisfaction of his ego. Another individual may motivate others to reach for a higher standard of living to improve a community. The global powers which exist are manifestations of individual actions proselyted and submitted to. If no individual chose ego over conscience; to manipulate and subject his fellow beings to his authority for selfish gains, global power structures would be quite different. Because the inner-struggle exists, however, individuals must band together to create shared standards out of self-preservation to regulate the exercise of individual self-interest.

Cooperation and Expansion
The struggle for survival, power, and independence, however, is not the sum of human experience. Just as ideas are a source of conflict, they are key in maximizing the functions of our socioeconomic system. Classical idealism emphasizes natural law as binding upon and applicable to all humanity. The quest to discover those natural laws and culturally codify them has led to progress in Human rights agreement and defining standards within the international community.

Unlimited Resources
The observation of technological and informational explosion in the nineteeth and twentieth centuries lead Paul Zane Pilzer (1990) to conclude that technology controls both the definition and the supply of physical resources. Human ingenuity is the natural resource. All the materials are of little worth until we make something of them. When it becomes scarce, we find a way to transport from where it is not scarce, we find a way (or better way) to manufacture it, or we find a substitute.

In this way, humanity can become a creative partner with nature in the evolution of ecosystems or it can be a destroyer. At the very least, we are armed with the idea that whatever the human condition, we have the power to change perspectives and solve the problems that would seem to threaten our continued existence

Isolationist Utopia(s)
Now we return again to our question about the inevitability of global interdependence. We have increasing interaction, exchange of ideas and goods with people and companies who would have been out of reach just a few short years ago. But does the ability to interact imply a requirement to interact? I would say, no indeed. It is possible to have a primarily self-reliant ecosystem contained within a relatively small boundary. The diversity of human belief, preference, and social goals, in fact, lends itself to localized communities or collaborations (to include non-local internet or religious belief systems). People gravitate towards like-minded associates. Historically they are like-minded because of tribal-familial commonalities. But today we can create communities on Facebook and followings on YouTube where we can participate in or even generate a niche culture.

It is imperative to remember that the human mind cannot be forced. The only effect is resistance. Therefore, the paramount need of human society is to allow free intellectual intercourse among individuals and the right to associate with like-minded people. Within their pocket communities they can discover the ideas which lead to peace, prosperity (in whatever definition they value) and determine the actions which will help to maintain that peace within their community. As long as belonging to that community is voluntary, if there are social laws that a person subscribe to a certain set of beliefs, the laws are just. Anyone who wishes not to associate with that group has the freedom to disassociate. In our global mobility, we are free to seek a new community. Those communities allow us to establish Zion in our own image. Being banished does not carry the same weight it did in less mobile times.

Globalization, being the spread of capitalist consumerism, is marked by each generation redefining its adolescent image then carrying it through the generation as part of a new cultural standard. Just as American baby boomer youth were defined by the inception of pop culture, the trend continues today among youth in India as described by Ritty Lukose (2005) consumes traditional Indian culture. *On the other hand, I have had many associates (some of my faith, and many of other faiths) who, because of religious conviction chose to abstain from modern American culture, whether by refusing to own a television or by refusing to allow their children to be indoctrinated by secular education. Many of those people have also rejected fashions and trends that are viewed as immodest and have chosen instead to manufacture their own clothing. Others have chosen to grow and preserve significant quantities of their own food. Because it is increasingly common and easy to purchase all the necessities of life and want significantly more than necessary from all quarters of the globe, does not mean that it is the only way.

Though such a statement may seem to promote primitive lifestyles, unlike cultural anthropologists who tend to romanticize primitive cultures and wish to preserve them, I see future cultural diversity as being a result of diverging convictions solidifying group associations. We simply have more options.

Scott Shershow questioned the competing romanticism and cynicism of globalization. If “a culture is already an adaptation, won't it continue to adapt? How can these local cultures be, on the one hand, seamless, pristine, and fragile and, on the other hand, the vital product of cultural cross-pollination?” (Shershow 2001). This is the “inevitability” of ecological evolution. Cultres will simply change and adapt over time. We have no idea what those changes will be, how or when they will manifest, or what triggers will motivate those changes. (For further discussion see the post titled Utopian Realism.)

Conclusion
Opposing forces of nature and human economy help to maintain a dynamic balance between predatory or powerful nations in cycles. These cycles tend toward increased order in socioeconomic systems. However, this increase in order must be taken over the long-view, understanding that particular ecosystems can fail but that the failures may contribute to the success of other systems which are better evolved.

However the most powerful force is not competition, but the power of ideas to unite groups. Localized power helps to maintain safety and protection from governments, which tend to increase in size and power without a significant system of checks and balances. If a state does not interfere with belief systems and beneficial practices and assembly, mini-cultures can create little pockets of utopia.

Globalization is a powerful force, and may seem inevitable, but it is no manifest destiny