Saturday, July 13, 2019

STEPS IN THE TRAJECTORY OF A LIFE

A person is not an object, but a trajectory unfolding within and against the context of everything else in the world from planetary climate to molecular isotopes.  At any point the person will be changed, if only slightly, or possibly wiped out.

Some forces will create advantages -- not just economic ones, but also parents who can nurture, neighborhoods that are safe, and nations that are stable.  But some forces will damage and distort the person in that moment or possibly all along the remaining trajectory.  The media is full of accounts of trauma to children in every part of the world, at every economic level, religious or not, expected and explained, or totally unsuspected, like subtle contaminations.

The life trajectory of persons in their first one-fifth or so are subdivided into clear stages according to their development, not taking into account the variations of culture or ecosystem or notions about life.  Damages done to them have far more attention than the positive factors.  After the first one-fifth or so, there's not so much research or even opinion, except that in the "pop" mind there's a reconsideration that used to be marked in women by the end of fertility and menstruation.  Some will posit a male "mid-life crisis" having more to do with physical strength or employability.  

By that point the descendant generation will be able to cope on its own, which can change dynamics.  I'm saying that biology still marks time passing.  In fact, what used to be the turning point towards decline was forty, but is now past fifty and looking at sixty.  We think of two old ages: capable and engaged, and then fading into need.

Enormous pressure exists towards protecting, rescuing and celebrating children.  Gestation also proceeds in stages we call "trimesters".  In the first trimester the pregnancy is hardly apparent and we're told as many as one-fifth fail naturally without even being recognized.  The nausea in the mother at that time is said to be due to change in hormones and even to a barely dampened attempt to eject the new conceptus as a foreign entity.  Things like drinking or organic psychological difficulties (unbalanced hormones, non-functioning bits) can affect the tiny functions of the new cells.

The second trimester is relatively peaceful but the third one makes the growth of the new being crowd and burden everything in the mother's body.  "Quickening," the first perception of the baby moving independently, used to be important but now it's pushed aside by our ability to make sonograms or even use a needle to pull out cells for analysis.  We no longer worry about "ensoulment."

The third, and even the second trimesters, are also affected by a philosophical and political war over whether a gestating infant is a human being in the full sense of having legal standing.  If a mother with a baby inside is killed, so that the baby also dies, is that one murder or two?  This is quite apart from war atrocities that deliberately rip out the baby and kill it.  On the positive side, babies have been operated on in the womb, by cutting access through the mother and then closing it.  I'll just skip abortion.

The point of birth is probably the most dangerous and impressive event in a human life, though only the mother remembers it.  Before my mother's generation both mothers and babies often died, independently or together.  Today's medical world is faced with the problem of the price of saving in particular the baby when it is marginal.

The very first days may expose the baby to trauma in the new harsh environment.  Adjusting to eating instead of nourishment through transfusion is one of the first causes of distress.  The brain would already be capable of forming around impressions of abuse.  Cells are abundant but those not used will die.

The first few months and years of life are parallel to a nestling bird that is born only able to eat, excrete, and gape.  The brain must learn to operate limbs and organs, which isn't easy and could become traumatic if punished or neglected.  This will affect the existential base of personality from then on.  It is physical, nearly impossible to change, though it will accept additions.

From three to age eight or so, the child is perfecting the "human" skills of walking and talking.  It reacts to others but doesn't always remember.  At one stage it becomes fearful, which seems related to brain maturing.  It is vulnerable to torture, deliberate abuse to invite distress, whether or not that is defined as "sexual."

At eight a person can be considered by some cultures to be a mini-adult and asked to work.  This period might be defined as erotic and social, though fertility doesn't come until after twelve or so, but a person at this stage can interact.  I've heard it said by perverts that girls this age may be molested even to penetration because they can't conceive.  Much of our sexual morality is controlled by the fertility of women and was biologically constrained in men by age until the invention of viagra.

Adolescence is a well-known stage in Western Culture but not very well managed.  This stage of life is deeply affected by economics, so that systems that make a marriage partner necessarily obligate a fee or forge a power advantage, can cause boys in particular to be turned out of the family or at other periods of history could change the course of nations.  Fertility-based moral systems blend biology with politics in mythological ways particularly vulnerable to things like medical inventions that change the terms of relationship.  For instance, something like virginity was once a way of guarding the monetary value of the bride and protecting from disease or the damage of childbirth.  It justified the horror of sewing a child's vulva shut and condemned royal wives to beheading.


We don't much recognize the early twenties as a stage except that some would like to put this age gtoup on their parent's insurance.  It is a time of advanced education or employment beginnings, including military careers, all of which shut some opportunities and open others, for which the person may or may not truly qualify.  If they do, they can expect better health, probably less trauma, and more happiness.  The key to a successful life is not money but education and engagement with others.

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