Yes, but people regularly hear "oxycodone" whenever I mention oxytocin, which is disturbing. The mental association should not be "a-ha drug!", it should primarily be "oh, he's talking about the love hormone."
Why aren't you all Communists?
- Thread starter inthesomeday
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Years of SSRI use, internet research, etc. You?
The thing is, most people change their idea of what their "ultimate ideal" is as they get older. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. As I got older though and realized that dream was unrealistic for me, I set my sights more and more on things I could actually attain and redefined what my "ultimate ideal" was. Society needs to do the same thing. It needs to give up on childish dreams of creating a utopia and focus on making realistic improvements to our daily lives. And that goes for any "ism" that people believe in, not just communism. Any ism that promises a utopia is an ism that should be avoided when deciding how a given society is going to be run. The only exception to this being utilitarianism since that just advocates taking the course of action that causes the greatest amount of good (good being defined as "positive outcome") for the greatest number of people possible. Of course, it's not really an exception to the rule because utilitarianism, by it's very nature, does not promise a utopia.
Some other kids didn't realize that their dream was unrealistic, and became astronauts.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Your mental association is "love hormone." Nowhere does that mean it should be "the love hormone." Oxytocin is a hormone and neuropeptide involved in dozens of known and more unknown functions. Most of them are bodily stuff and not notedly psychological. Some of the psychological stuff is very unloving, like a positive correlation with oxytocin levels and rejection of outgroup members.
Love is a complicated process involving a lot more than oxytocin.
Personal heuristics don't translate to building blocks of information. Personal, simplifying heuristics, even when true, don't mean that other things therefore are not true.
No hormone or neurotransmitter is the "love" or "background" hormone. They aren't one thing, and the things they are don't neatly align with our language in such a way that their causes and effects can be reasoned as such.
Your experience with SSRIs may have been general emotion muting. That's not uncommon, but that's personal. It's possible that if you're experience significant blunting, it's because your dose is high enough to significantly downregulate your receptors. That would mean your mental association with the effects of adding serotonin comes from a personal experience of, long term, decreasing serotonin.
MDMA's euphoria isn't fully understood but the best evidence suggests it comes primarily from the flood of serotonin it releases. If it was significantly the dopamine rush, that would make its effects more akin to amphetamine or cocaine. If one is taking a high SSRI dose and has downregulated serotonin receptors, most of the euphoria effect of MDMA is blocked. That's a good clue the locus of euphoria is not in its dopaminergic effect.
But the thing that really irked me is that GoodSarmatian was riffing off your comment and even if your response was correct about what oxytocin is (it wasn't), he demonstrated an understanding of what you meant and you in turn responded back to him as if he didn't.
I feel like I made whatever point I was trying to make, and am satisfied with it. Let's not take this discussion any further. The topic is communism, after all.
This is a great clarification.
This post actually supports my point. People need to accept that everyone doesn't get to live in paradise and that the vast majority of people will never even come close to it. The best most of us can do is try to find some measure of happiness in whatever hand we are dealt in life. To use myself as an example again: When I was around 12 or 13, I decided I wanted to be a career soldier. Now obviously I did get to live that dream for a while, but my knee giving out on me cut that career short. Did I sulk about having my dream snatched away from me by circumstances that were outside my control? Yeah, for a little while. But then I redefined my sense of happiness yet again and found purpose in what I had around me. That happened to be my wife and (now) two daughters. So instead of sitting around being depressed and angry that I'll never live in my paradise, I have learned to be happy taking care of my family and just knowing there are at least three people out there that care about me.
The point in all that being you can't get yourself hung up on one idea of what will make you happy. You'll just waste your life and be perpetually unhappy by doing so. You'll also likely miss out on other opportunities that you never even considered while you were hung up on that one idea of happiness. It is just a simple reality of life that a few people will actually get to make their dreams reality, while the vast majority will have to tuck their dreams away and focus on more realistic expectations.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
The one where you started arguing against GoodSarmatian's supporting comment of your own idea that the bias of our collective biochemistry will affect what social mediations are viable?
I was not arguing against it - that is merely your perception, Hygro. I was clarifying a possible misunderstanding about my original post. I will not be replying to any further comments.
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FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
Iam against communism because I dont want to starve to death or end up with a bullet to the back of the head ?
Humanity was not designed to live in a hive like social structure like ants.
Thats why communism is a failure everytime its been tried. Even in Oil rich Venzuala it turned into a Dystopian nightmare.
The only notable success was Isreal and that was in a time of crisis. Even now all the communist communes have voluntarly dissolved into capitalistic business with private property. It migh work as a tempory stepping stone for developing nations but more often then not communism ends up being a dictatorship and disaterous economily outside wartime conditions
Humanity was not designed to live in a hive like social structure like ants.
Thats why communism is a failure everytime its been tried. Even in Oil rich Venzuala it turned into a Dystopian nightmare.
The only notable success was Isreal and that was in a time of crisis. Even now all the communist communes have voluntarly dissolved into capitalistic business with private property. It migh work as a tempory stepping stone for developing nations but more often then not communism ends up being a dictatorship and disaterous economily outside wartime conditions
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I agree with your general point, that people who found out that their dream was unrealistic have to move on instead of being depressed about it. But I don't think communism is necessary example of such unrealistic dream. That's what I meant writing about kids who actually became astronauts. You can decide at some point that you should strive for something else in your life, but you wouldn't discourage your kid if he dreams about going to Mars. Because it may actually work and even if he doesn't literally go there, this dream may help him to achieve something great in his life. And if he doesn't, it may be your fault, that you told him "get real" at some point.
Lexicus
Deity
At one time it was thought that making slavery illegal in the US was an impossible dream, a utopia.
Yes, from the point of view of XIX century American slave, current US society would probably already look like utopia.
And I'm sure communist ideology and Soviet example also influenced the idea to grant people of all races equal rights in post-WW2 USA.
Lexicus
Deity
Well, yes and no. "Soviet example" not so much. The USSR was not very good at granting equal rights to the various nationalities residing in its borders (indeed, it was Stalin's policies of wholesale resettlement of "problematic" national groups that provided the blueprint for what the Nazis tried later). In that sense I'd say it was more the bad examples of the Nazis and e.g. South Africa that influenced the course of civil rights in the US.
Communist ideology, moreso. Most Communist and far-left organizations in the US were for racial equality. The CPUSA's anti-racist organizing in the '30s and '40s was huge and certainly contributed formatively to those who would press home the civil rights struggle in the '50s and '60s.
aelf
Ashen One
You can take the 'isms' out of society, but you can't take society out of 'isms'. Whether you acknowledge it or not, ideology exists. It won't disappear just because you declared that society is utilitarian and pragmatic. Those notions too are susceptible to ideological tropes, especially in practice.
This is simply because beliefs drive politics. And as long as people in a society have shared beliefs and a desire to improve their lives as members of society, their society will always be trying to attain a vision of utopia, whether this is explicitly said or not.
Lexicus
Deity
Heh, but of course this (bolded part) wasn't always the case. Certainly the notion of linear progress is one that came about rather recently in historical terms, from the Enlightenment, and the ideological children of the Enlightenment - communism, socialism, capitalism, anarchism, liberalism, and so on.
civvver
Deity
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I would tend to agree with you except for one thing. We're finally reaching a place in history where a huge majority of people don't have to actually produce food, clothing or shelter to simply survive. Even 200 years ago a large amount of people had to produce their own food, some were specialists, merchants, craftsmen and bought food and stuff. But for the first time people don't have to scratch out a living. We have excess. And that leads to a lot of time to ponder our existence and search for these utopias and isms. A lot of these systems might have been impractical in the past, but now they might be fine cus we're going to reach a point where technology makes it so everyone has food, clothing, shelter, basic needs just accounted for. It could be now if we had the distribution network. And once everyone's needs are met we'll start to ponder happiness on a global scale.
As a side comment to this, WWII itself kinda helped the Civil Rights Movement get started as well. The many acts of heroism on the battlefield performed by black soldiers did a lot to help break down the idea that black people were inferior to whites and the fact that they fought so valiantly meant that black people had "proved themselves". After that, it became harder and harder for racist politicians to continue to deny rights to the black population.
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