Hey hey folks, here is a pic of the snow that just came down today. It has been alternating between snow and sunshine, heavy weather! Just missed getting caught in it when I went for a walk earlier. Got a good look at a buzzard on the walk. I was sitting at the top of the cliffs and saw it rise up on a thermal, wheeling round and round, climbing above the cliffs into the sky and away. Could clearly see its underside markings and the shape of wings and tail. I'm sure one could see a lot just sitting there for a while with binoculars. I also want to try and find the sandstone contact in the woods down there. It is supposed to be between the upper jointed Limestone that forms the cliffs and the lower more massive Whitebrook Limestone but I've never actually seen it. Also was only a couple of feet from a robin singing away on the cliff top. Tried to film him with phone but quality was crap. Shame as if I'd had video cam could have zoomed in really close and seen his hairy nostrils.
Well actually I wanted to post a bit about the book I am reading, it's very thought provoking so far (three chapters in). It's "The Prehistory of the Mind" by Steve Mithen and is about the evolution of the modern human mind and the development of art, science and culture. He is an arcaeologist who apparently went to art college but has been a Research Fellow at Cambridge so nice mixed background. He is just getting onto his theory now, which appears to be a kind of synthesis of the ideas of foremost psychologists. He has been describing the difficulties in trying to establish how the mind works in that it appears so integrated with information and ideas being shared around and used extensively in analogy and metaphor. Looking at the way hunter gatherer peoples interact with the world around them today it seems clear that they conduct their tasks holistically without keeping separate tasks compartmentalised as the theories of evolutionary psychologists such as Leda Cosmides and John Tooby would imply. But all this is me simply summarising the first few chapters. He also mentions the "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" quote, which basically means if you look at an animal growing up it goes through similar stages as it did in its evolution. So he is going on to wonder how it is children think and talking about some theories in which the child first uses a generalised learning "programme" to acquaint itself with the world (using similar methods to learn language and symbols) but the mind becomes modular in its organisation. The basic problem seems to be a way of reconciling specific individual skills or intelligences with the generalised way in which elements are used to cross fertilise disciplines, the use of analogy from one area of knowledge to elucidate another. Well we shall see what he covers further into the book but I really wanted to write about this last night when my mind was whirring.
I can't exactly remember what it was that I wanted to write down, but it was roughly to do with wondering how people from hunter gatherer cultures interact with themselves and each other when transferred to a situation such as one we find ourselves in. In other words how do say, American Indians or Australian Aborigines function in a modern city environment disconnected from the land and where people do not have such a strong connection with one another. Putting aside the accusation of drinking and gambling which is often made to both the groups I have mentioned as this is I believe due to the way society has stigmatised these people and taken away their rights. But how do these people who regard a multitude of elements within their own landscape and environment as interlinked and multi-representational; regard objects within our society. After all we can find similarities in our behaviour where an apparent transference of these mental functions occurs, our reverence for the technological such as televisions and our modern day crucifixes and portable oracles, mobile phones. But of course my comments here are slightly flippant and surficial as such relationships are much more complex than I have made out. The mobile phone for instance could seem due to the way people hold it in high regard, panic if they lose or misplace it, as analogous to a totemic symbol such as a crucifix. However it has a function as a communication device and as such is a kind of cybernetic extension of the body, an addition to such means of interpersonal communication as face to face conversation, or letter writing. But I often wonder if the apparent "showering of gifts" upon mobile phones, giving them new covers, ringtones and pictures is somewhat akin to the behaviour of many people towards the household pet. These behaviours seem to be connected to those briefly mentioned by Mithen when he discusses a child lavishing attention on a favourite doll. In some ways more so as the mobile like the doll is essentially an inanimate object, however once again the issues are more complex as since we can communicate with ones we love on our mobiles, even now with video on some phones, that a mobile seems perhaps an intermediate form between the animate and inanimate. One can certainly imagine a person of even a few hundred years ago perhaps believing a mobile phone to be some kind of magic or divine artefact.
I could probably go on in this vein but perhaps if I read more I will have more insight, though I doubt he will deal with artefacts. I may be wrong there though as he is an archaeologist. In other news the PC I bought has finally given up the ghost and I can't really be bothered to even try and fix it any more. It just makes me angry and depressed (I'm glad I carried on writing this as it cheered me up or at least refocussed my mind) so I shall salvage what I can from it, sell bits and just concentrate on saving for a Mac so I don't have to worry about all this shit anymore. Bah!
END OF LINE
No comments:
Post a Comment