Monday, April 19, 2010

Chloe quote of today:
"It will be a great learning experience, and a humbling experience, when I realize that I'm not the center of the universe."


I am extremely interested lately in humanity--in the way we work, in who and what we are as individuals, as a species, as a community, in the way we are designed to feel and think and interact, the way our minds perceive, the way our bodies operate, the way our bodies and minds affect one another. At the moment and for the past several weeks this interest has manifested itself in a desire to know everything about mothers and babies and families, particularly living in natural patterns--that is, trying to mother in ways that resemble the ways our distant ancestors would have, in the ways that our bodies and minds have evolved to mother and be mothered. I don't particularly want one (a family, a baby) of my own right now, but I am fascinated by the whole thing--the loving, expanding, growing, learning, togetherness. I'm not sure exactly what attracts me, or what I'm seeing there that I didn't before. I just know that I'm voraciously interested.

Anyway, Chloe says it freaks her out.

1 comment:

  1. You might be interested in some of the recent work in cultural anthropology. Older views tended to see culture as uniquely human, and was studied by people who were typically anti-science, but some of the more recent stuff is very scientifically grounded and sees the capacity for social learning (which then creates cumulative culture) as a biological adaptation.
    Over the past few years I've been more and more intrigued by the biological aspects of human behaviours (that's what I thought I'd be doing at ASU) - and now I'm getting hooked on the social learning stuff as well (it's going to make an appearance in my dissertation, I can feel it!). But I don't know too much about the maternal side, and the others you are describing, so it'd be great to talk about it sometime. :-)

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