FELT BONDS OF MEANING

Let’s say there are two kinds of bonds between persons.  In order to keep you interested, let’s look at them in terms of sexwork.  These are interactive bonds.  One would be the on-skin and muscle-involved sensations that two people provide each other and that are noted and remembered in the cells that accept the codes of touch.  

The other is soon activated by these actions and physical contacts, but can also stand alone.  It is the brain-conceived but non-physical origin with impact on the organs of the body that generate and remember liquid-carried molecules in-skin.  Though the action can be initiated by images or sounds, the process can be self-kindled and sustained with memory or imagination.  This is the power of story and art.

Winnicott’s assertion of the “play space” that is created between mother and child, Victor Turner’s framing of a space/time that is entered over a threshold, and Porges’ description of  far-reaching empathy for others -- many of us have felt these related but unseen phenomena.  In fact, it may be the evolved possibility supported by mirror cells, and eye beams that has made us uniquely “human” — that is, able to stick together in families, affinities, shared purposes, organizations, nations and as a species.  

The virtual sharing is strongest between two people and weakest as an entire species but can even include different species, as in pets. The trigger is intimacy, time spent together, a desire to protect and prolong, sharing, memory, appreciation. 

This is very difficult to write about, partly because people don’t believe it and partly because it seems to be disappearing.  Jared Diamond suggests that we have lost the ability to connect to each other in person.  He contrasts New Guinea where no one has glass screens.  People stand close, looking into eyes, smelling the other, maybe touching.  We pick up a “thick” way of relating that persists and enriches the memory.   

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/author-jared-diamond-on-the-breakdown-of-american-democracy

Here’s another approach to the idea of bonds across space and time, the elements of cooperation and progress.  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/scientists-say-your-mind-isn-t-confined-to-your-brain-or-even-your-body?utm_source=pocket-newtab

“The mind is more than just the brain. No doubt, the brain plays an incredibly important role. But our mind cannot be confined to what’s inside our skull, or even our body, according to a definition first put forward by Dan Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine and the author of the 2016 book, Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human.

“the emergent self-organizing process, both embodied and relational, that regulates energy and information flow within and among us.”

“The definition has since been supported by research across the sciences, but much of the original idea came from mathematics. Siegel realized the mind meets the mathematical definition of a complex system in that it’s open (can influence things outside itself), chaos capable (which simply means it’s roughly randomly distributed), and non-linear (which means a small input leads to large and difficult to predict result).”

“In math, complex systems are self-organizing, and Siegel believes this idea is the foundation to mental health. Again borrowing from the mathematics, optimal self-organization is: flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable. This means that without optimal self-organization, you arrive at either chaos or rigidity—a notion that, Siegel says, fits the range of symptoms of mental health disorders. “

I regret that my math phobia (which I blame on Mrs. Rumble in the 4th grade who was very punitive about it) prevents me from getting hold of this idea very well.  Also, the positive qualities —  flexibility, adaptivity, coherence, energy and stability — are cliches, all snap words whose meaning has escaped.  Yeah, yeah, we already know.

Quantum thought proposes that two tiny particles like atoms on opposite sides of something vast as a planet are somehow connected and can act in unison.  This is closer to what I’m trying to talk about, which is more like Vulcan mind-meld except not confined to logical rational thought.  More like the young man who walked into the Scriver Museum in the Sixties, causing an immediate connection with me.  He was headed to Stanford to study philosophy and he left me a contact name and number, but I lost them. Now I would really like to know what his take on existence has become.

https://candicewu.com/invisible-bonds-abundance-money-love/   This is an interesting “take” on the subject.  Maybe it has something to do with culture.  

I’m going to cut this short and go mow the lawn or the town will be after my hide.  They have no empathy for "intellectual stuff."