The concept of “Resource Holding Potential” (RHP) has been offered as the best explanation for the social structure of canines. This theory has gained favor because it is seemingly more resonant with the fact that the social behavior of canines is very fluid, unlike the old theory of dominance which held that canine social structure was a rigid hierarchy of rank. Eric Brad on his blog, which is a great resource for a synthesis on the latest thinking on dogs, recently explored the notion in regards to the old view of dominance.

http://lifeasahuman.com/2013/pets/what-to-do-if-you-think-your-dog-is-dominant/

EB:

“The trouble with the whole ‘dominant’ conversation is that it assigns a motivation to the dog. We don’t know what their motivations are. We don’t have an ability to know with any certainty what dogs are thinking when they do things. Too often this speculation comes layered with a healthy portion of the human preconceptions and bias. We act on what we think the dog is doing and we could be very wrong.”

Right on, RIGHT ON! When we project dominance onto the behavior of dogs, we assume that a dog sees its self in relief against its surroundings, as a self relative to other selves, in competition with these other selves relative to the exigencies that come up over the passage of Time. That is too complicated to be a realistic assumption.

Supporting the RHP thesis is the theory that dogs evolved from a scavenger heritage:

EB: “That scavenger nature goes a long way to explaining why our dogs don’t get any reward out of controlling things just for the sake of having power or control. There just isn’t anything in it for them. Dogs seek to control stuff for they want for themselves. Period.”

Therefore as scavengers dogs can’t possibly be motivated by something as abstract as obtaining control over others for the sake of establish a dominance hierarchy of relative ranks.

But then later EB writes:

“From the dog’s perspective, there are several things to take into account when deciding whether or not to defend or acquire a resource. Is it a rare resource? How badly do I need it? Can I win it given the competition? How badly do my competitors want it? Is the energy I need to expend to get and hold it worth the effort? There are lots of questions. And the answer to most of them is ‘it depends.’ It’s just not a hard and fast decision every time.”

But what’s the difference between this kind of reasoning and reasoning about a dominance agenda? In fact the RHP approach, which purports to be the most efficient way for dogs to sort themselves out into a reasonable living arrangement, assigns even more complex motives to dogs than does the old dominance theory of obtaining control over others for the sake of obtaining control over others. If in the RHP theory a dog can think about wanting something relative to the degree that someone else might want that same thing, and to the degree to which that resource might be rare relative to other resources, then it can think about wanting something in the present relative to the degree it might want it in the future. It would be able to think: “I might not really want it right now, not as much as that one apparently does, so he can have it now, but wait a minute, I can remember when I really, really did want it, or I can imagine that I would really, really want it once I see him enjoying it, so if I really want it later, I won’t be able to have it? And because it’s not efficient to contest another for a resource once they’ve taken possession of it because then they’re really going to fight for it, therefore dogs would tend toward becoming proactive. A dog wouldn’t wait for a contest to erupt, he would assert supremacy for no reason other than to ensure that he can have access to any given resource whenever he wants it. And what would we call this proactive tendency? Dominance.

We’ve arrived at a self-defeating logic loop. If a dog is capable of doping out a complex risk assessment that is time and contextually sensitive, then thinking about achieving dominance would automatically follow. If a dog can think about controlling a resource, or a couple of resources, then it can think about controlling ALL the resources. And thinking about controlling all the resources is the same as being dominant. Furthermore, according to Neo-Darwinian logic Nature would soon cut to the chase and just encode an instinct to achieve dominance straightaway into the nature of dogs because this is so much easier than encoding for the capacity within an animal to entertain all that strategizing necessary to track the control parameters of each particular resource relative to each rival and then having to figure out the need to be dominant on its own.

Meanwhile Eric doesn’t notice that these two paragraphs contradict themselves and this is because he’s turning to this second point in order to substantiate the notion that RHP is fluid, dynamically variable and can thus explain how individuals adapt themselves to context. Whereas were he first and foremost concerned with building a model he would have run into this contradiction as an immediate dead end. But the appeal of transposing human psychology onto animal behavior is too expedient to resist given its infinite malleability to putty over glitches as they pop up.

And it’s ironic that the RHP/Village-Scavenger-Dog theory is most aimed at Cesar Milan in order to characterize him as the most misinformed dog guy who has ever held a leash. This will prove to be ironic because the RHP thesis has to play catch up with the relatively new science of emergence, the capacity of animals to spontaneously self-organize into collectivized group action without any direction from a leader. Modern ethology now says that the term dominance can be retained in the lexicon because they now see it as an emergent quality arising from a conglomeration of relationships. So a pack of wolves each work out their individual preferences over a variety of resources relative to other individuals, and from this emerges a stable social system. Each individual relationship can be termed dominant/submissive, it’s just that there isn’t an overarching dominance template. In the emergence approach, dominance and submissiveness aren’t character traits inherent in an individual, but rather are acquired characteristics by virtue of engaging in a dynamic that works out into a dominance and submissive relationship. Individual wolves vary genetically according to a bold versus shy gradient rather than dominant versus submissive, bold ones tending to have an advantage, but it’s not hard and fast. Every dog has its day, even one who has to act submissive most of the time. Just insert a human psychology of a cost/benefit analysis and the circumstances of a particular context will give us the specifics of any given interpersonal dynamic. And so a loose kind of dominance network settles over the pack so that it more efficiently expends energy on useful pursuits rather than intramural struggles. The individual doesn’t want to attain a superior rank, it just wants to maintain access to a resource.

However this reasoning factors out into an oxymoron and the aforementioned irony. For example, Cesar Millan sees himself as a dominant pack leader and according to RHP theory this is a grievous and outdated error. But remember in the modern understanding of dominance as a hierarchy revolving around resources, the characteristic of the structure is now said to emerge from the network of relationships, and since Cesar controls a dog’s access to every resource and is universally and unfailingly consistent in this approach, then operationally he has attained the rank of Pack Leader because he believes this to be the case. He has imposed this belief as the organizing principle inherent in all the relationships he cultivates with each individual dog, and additionally that is the only way he allows them to interact as well. The only one who can show dominance is Cesar. Cesar’s Way IS a rigid pack structure, a rigid chain of command with one supreme leader, no lieutenants, captains, Sergeant’s et al., just privates. (This view strays from the nature of hierarchy as explained in “Design In Nature” as there must always be a system of progressively inferior channels serving as tributaries to the bigger ones.) Since Cesar is an omniscient holder of all resources, and since he sees himself as an alpha figure in charge, and since this is what governs all relationships, therefore according to the new definition of canine social structure as an emergent system characterized by the nature of the relationships, he’s right. His sense of a pack leader emerges from the network of relationships. So those of the emergent, RHP village scavenging dog theory have no logical beef with Cesar.

But none of these self-defeating logic loops and oxymorons are the biggest problem with the RHP approach. The main problem is that this presumed internal decision making process, that is then to be broadcast through a distinctive body language so as to communicate intent to a rival, would have had to have evolved in tandem with the equal/opposite suite of traits, mental capacities and display behaviors so that said rivals are capable of receiving the intended message and are then able to act in a complementary manner so that their signals don’t get crossed and pass futilely between them. We can’t just jump abracadabra to full blown intellectual capacity for risk/benefit analysis that is context sensitive just because this happens to be efficient. So what if it’s efficient, we can’t just invent a human psychology by way of an explanation. The signal of the signaler has to find a ready audience in the individual receiving the signal in order for this capacity to evolve. There’s no point in inventing a signal  transmitter without inventing a signal receiver while you’re at it. One half of the communication equation can’t evolve without the other half evolving at the same stage of development, neither lagging nor outstripping it, and while also yielding an immediate benefit in some way eons before it arrives at the full blown expression of cost/benefit analysis and reporting of results via behavior that we are supposedly finding exhibited by animals today. It doesn’t do an individual any good to defer to an inferior that it could have bested (especially from the species point of view which is also said to benefit from the cream of the genes rising to the top of the genome), and then it would prove dangerous to signal deference to a physically superior individual by displays of vulnerability if that physical superior doesn’t recognize the signals of deference. What if at the beginning of the evolutionary process an individual submits and then is injured or killed because the superior interprets the submission as weakness, or as being wounded and hence an invitation to be attacked? That evolutionary thread is immediately terminated.

Before we can be asked to accept such a premise, we must first be provided the  step-by-step progression by which the signals that facilitate both sides of the transaction have evolved in syncopated lock step. For example, such an explanation has been offered for the evolution of the eye with each minor advancement laid out step by step replete with its adaptive advantage for the organism at each stage of its evolution as it progresses toward the fully functional complex eye. What then is the original impulse that evolved into a signal of deference? What is the first impulse that went on to evolve into the signal that indicates an individual is prepared to compete over a resource and which at the same time gives a rival pause and the aggressor time and internal motive to hold itself back from getting entangled in an unnecessary aggressive encounter? And what about the inverse, where is the precursor to a superior being mollified and defused by an obsequious gesture? Instead we are only given human psychological treatments, fully formed, fully evolved in order to explain what’s being held as a fundamental organizing principle of canine social life, which as a matter of fact predates by many epochs the invention of language and the evolution of abstract thought.

Interestingly, if the RHP folks were to ask: What is the greatest resource for wolves (hint, large dangerous prey animal) then the body language between prey and predator would provide them with precisely these precursors and a model would follow that is hierarchal, fluidly adaptable to circumstances, resonant with the evolution from the wolf into the domesticated dog, demonstrable in the capacity for dogs to work with and live intimately in man’s world, and which explains all the things that dogs do from riding in cars, howling at sirens to patiently sitting for an errant morsel at toddler’s high chair. In NDT the emotional dynamic that step-by-step evolves into a complex social structure is provided: (prey/predator–male/female–parent/offspring–peer-to-peer) with the benefits demonstrable for each participant in any given interaction.

The easiest way to get a grasp on the animal mind as a flow system is to read “Design In Nature” by Adrian Bejan wherein he definitively shows scientifically, inarguably, that the purpose of hierarchy in nature is to facilitate flow. In each and every structure to be found in nature and even in man’s artifices, there is one main channel and a branching system of progressively finer and finer tributaries in order to saturate the field in question. In canine social life the main channel is the hunt, this is the one Big Want. Then there are subsidiary “little wants” manifested by any given dogs so-called personality. The canine nature is to be attracted to other canines with a force that is greater than can be consummated by simple social contact. The friction over these little-wants, and the capacity for these to be easily resolved without violence, reflects that dogs are attracted to each other with a force that can’t be consummated by being friendly. Thus they are driven to work together toward a common object-of-attention that can absorb their combined momentums, hence the hunt as the main channel. When we observe friction over any given resource, these are really only “excuses” for them to express the friction that exists between them in the confines of the pack. The dog that guards a resource, doesn’t really want it, it needs it. So give it what it really wants, the one Big Want, and friction over the little wants automatically dissipate.

The first question one has to ask when contemplating the source and mechanics of any design whether it be inanimate or inanimate, is: “What is the current? This question will lead one to understand emotion as that current, and the principle of emotional conductivity (E->UE->RE) as its principles of movement around which social life configures.

When interpreting behavior there are two—and only two—options, either one begins with attraction or with intention. If one opts for the latter, and I understand how on the surface that does appear reasonable, nevertheless it is still an assumption one is choosing to make. There is no actual direct evidence to support this assumption, anymore than there is direct evidence to support the notion of attraction. The case has to be made circumstantially and either way one is making an assumption. Furthermore it’s not possible to defer making one of these assumptions in the hopes of taking in as much information as possible before choosing one or the other. The human intellect by default inserts human reason into purposive systems it can’t understand. The human mind always personifies which is why the notion of intention seems immediately logical and self-evident. It is an intellectual reflex of the human mind to insert intention into intelligent action. And therefore the only way one can test any thesis predicated on intention, is to also learn to see in terms of the alternative, attraction. Only then can one follow both systems out to their logical conclusions and then objectively decide which one makes the most sense.

Related posts:

1. Emotional Projection http://www.wimp.com/throwstick/ Does this dog need its head examined, or does...
2. Dog Star Daily I think Roger Abrantes is the best expositor of the...
3. The Constructal Law and Behaviorism I’m surprised, as a matter of fact stunned, that modern...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Does this dog need its head examined, or does this video reveal something profound about the nature of information?

Modern ethologists, behaviorists and many trainers argue that dogs and wolves organize into social structures according to a rational calculation relative to gaining control over resources. Supposedly dogs compute a cost/benefit analysis, while taking in all the relevant variables of a given context, in order to decide whether or not it is worth the effort and risk to challenge another individual over a particular resource. So if dogs are capable of such mental gymnastics, filtering and assessing complex criteria in a dynamic interaction which is  going to factor out over a long period of time, how can a dog think it is able to play with a statue? What part of cold, lifeless, motionless steel isn’t relevant to this context?

The object of evolution and therefore behavior, is to import objects of resistance into the configuration. Evolution transpires through a principle of thermodynamics called the Constructal law. This has been established by Adrian Bejan in his book “Design In Nature.” While universal across the animal kingdom, this principle of self-organization around which the animal mind is configured is easiest to see in the dog (as well as very, very young children). The dog projects physical memories of resistance onto objects of attraction that resist being “emotionally accelerated” i.e. put into motion. The past is projected onto the present in order to enable the future. This is how the animal mind arrives at an emotional response. And in the animal mind an emotional response is the precursor to action. (When young children play with toys they are emotionally projecting as well but when prodded to think about it, the bubble is burst and they concede they are only “pretending.”) However this dog feels that the statue is alive, as alive as any human being that has ever accelerated its brain and body into hyper-manic prey instinct mode by throwing a stick, and this is the entire scope of its conscious awareness. It will eventually tire of the frustration because the statue is unable to go beyond the initial phase of mirroring, i.e. triggering the emotional battery. (although with a border collie you can never know how long it will persist). Nevertheless the collie isn’t pretending. And a quick thought experiment, if this was a dog hyper sensitive about its food bowl, and were a statue of another dog placed near its bowl, do you think we might see a sustained emotional response that is likewise out of proportion to context?

Emotionally projecting feelings of resistance means that a dog doesn’t perceive reality directly. Rather, reality triggers its physical memory banks, (i.e. emotional battery) and this releases energy (stress) and the dog becomes either afraid, excited or aroused depending on Temperament and context, both of which are a function of emotional conductivity. If both parties in the interaction can exchange their feelings of resistance (stress = emotional mass) so that they become in emotional counterbalance with each other, then they create a new feeling and this will elaborate in a prescribed manner so that they will end up mirroring each other. In other words, they will self-organize into a complex hierarchy of a lot of little wants, crystallized around one Big Want. Furthermore, being able to feel a common object-of-attention that can absorb this stress, greatly facilitates the process and exponentially improves the configuration because this is how objects of resistance are incorporated into the fold. So called “resource guarding” is an artifact of the phenomenon of emotional projection by which the configuration evolves. Two dogs project into the same object-of-attraction, but it’s not enough to absorb their collective energies. This is an indirect way of connecting with each other, and the resulting stress between them will accrue and if emotion is free to run its course will ultimately guide them toward an object-of-attention that can absorb their collective energies, i.e. the one “Big Want.” Everything dogs do fits into this template of emotional conductivity.

While explaining this dynamic might sound complicated because we don’t have the luxury of intellectual abracadabra, nevertheless it happens intuitively and thoughtlessly every time a dog and owner play fetch. Just take emotion, add feelings, no thinking required.

Related posts:

1. Emotional Projection and the Self Olympic athletes do it, lovers do it, and now we...
2. A Critique of Context-Is-Everything Followed by an Introduction to Canine Body Language I started this section on body language in order to...
3. Jane Austen and Emotional Projection NPR reported on some intriguing research. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/10/09/162401053/a-lively-mind-your-brain-on-jane-austen Professor Natalie Phillips...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

For sure the highlight of the conference was the keynote speech by Temple Grandin and for me the takeaway point was her statement that animals form a sensory impression of their world through sight, sound, smell and touch rather than through a rational linear construct of reality. In other words, their mind derives from a visceral interface with their surroundings, rather than according to the intellectual abstract constructions that derive from the human intellect. I interpret this to mean we should interpret animal behavior in terms of emotion and feelings rather than inserting our human logic into their behavior. She frequently quotes Jaak Panksepp’s findings on emotion and his emphasis on its pre-verbal, non-cognitive foundation and she remonstrates along with him how long and difficult the road has been to introduce the notion of emotion into the scientific discussion of animal behavior. The good news is that their emphasis on emotion is beginning to prevail and if I may chime in, NDT is not late to that party, emotion has been the entire scope of Natural Dog Training since the 1970‘s.

I believe the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from Dr. Grandin’s remarks is that an animal does not see itself as a self, separate and distinct from its surroundings. Taking her statement completely to heart, the only logical interpretation is that emotion configures an animals’ mind around the principles of energy, the same principles around which the very bodies of the animals have evolved around. Its surroundings become integrated into its sense of a self. This means that all behavior is a function of attraction, of becoming incomplete when stimulated, and then wanting to return to emotional neutrality, to feel whole again. In my view we’re only half way there. Just as it was hard to get science to accept emotion as relevant, it will next be necessary to let energy into the paradigm. Science immediately dismisses this as mysticism or vitalism, but never forget it also dismissed emotion as anthropomorphism. Emotion is animal energy so that when an animal is emotional, it must move. (Stress is when an animal is energized and can’t move freely.) Thus we can say that animals are endowed with an innate momentum and this momentum invokes the laws of energy around which the animal mind configures. The current emphasis on cognition misses this point entirely. Self-organizing behavioral patterns are not cognition, but they are not mindless either. They result from emotion elaborating into feelings according to a principle of conductivity. Understanding emotion as the basis of a networked intelligence, a flow system, will prove to be the next frontier.

On the flight home I was treated to a spectacular view of the Smoky and Appalachian mountain ranges from the vantage of 32,000 feet. At that scale, all features of the landscape below are softened and the principles of flow that etched the valleys, rivers, cliffs and ravines, roadways and trails into a flow pattern become so obvious. The same pattern was even mirrored in the white billowing mountains of clouds hanging on the far horizon. After leaving the wilds of West Virginia and crossing into suburbia on the approach to  Washington D.C., from that great height the housing developments configured around tract roadways took on the appearance of Aztec jewelry, adorned by swimming pools of vivid blue, almost turquoise, affixed by metal surfaces gleaming in the morning sunrise like shiny silver. I tried to imagine it all through the eyes of Adrian Bejan, author of “Design In Nature” to hone my understanding of Constructal law as the basis of all structure, be it animate or inanimate, animal or human. I’m happy to report that our presentation introduced the Constructal law as being of the utmost significance to the animal mind as a flow system. This may be the very first time an academic setting has entertained the notion of Constructal law as the basis for how the animal mind processes information from input to throughput to output. Nature is one ever expanding multi-tiered interconnected flow system, emotion is how we interface and improve our access to its flows. My fears of data dumping notwithstanding, I hope this came across in my talk.

(I want to thank Sang Koh for his artistic contributions to our presentation. The world headquarters of Natural Dog Training, my little cabin in the woods, never looked so good.)

Related posts:

1. The Information is in the Energy Great article below about slime mold and its capacity to...
2. Dog Star Daily I think Roger Abrantes is the best expositor of the...
3. The Constructal Law and Behaviorism I’m surprised, as a matter of fact stunned, that modern...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Eric Brad: “I do have some difficulty with your linking “emotion” to the “current” that Bejan describes in his work on constructal theory. I’ve done some reading today and even found a great TED talk that Bejan delivered on constructal theory. Very informative stuff but it differs in some significant ways from what you are characterizing here. For example, the Wikipedia page describes the major scientific criticisms of constructal theory as follows: “there is neither a mention of what these “currents” are nor an explicit definition of what “providing easier access” means. As a result, constructal theory is very versatile, but often unconvincing: depending on the choices made for the currents and the “access” to them, it can lead to extremely different results.” (Really? What different results are possible from Bejan’s explication of organ size and locomotion in terms of moving a physical body over long distances?)

“In defense of his theory (again from the Wikipedia page on Constructal Theory), Bejan has countered his critics by stating “the constructal law is not about what flows, but about the physics phenomenon of how any flow system acquires its evolving configuration (design) in time. The constructal law is not about optimality (max, min, opt)—it is the definition of “life” in physics terms, and of the time direction of the changes in flow configuration.” Taken in that context, it seems clear to me that what Bejan describes would be the tendency of any system with flowing matter to evolve toward a more efficient form over time. If one applies such a theory to nature (plants and animals), it seems to agree with Darwin’s theories as the more efficient species would be more likely to survive in order to breed.”

“In my reading thus far, I can find no reference by Adrian Bejan to this “other” current that you link to “emotion.” If one can accept your premise that such an “energy” does exist, then your writings make sense to me. I think it falls down for me because I do not accept as fact the existence of this unmeasurable “other” energy you choose to define as emotion.”

KB: Yes, Bejan doesn’t talk about emotion as a current. This is my interpretation of behavior, one I’ve been pursuing since the seventies. The point with the Constructal law however is its finding that whenever we find something persisting over time, then it is due to an order that has configured itself around a current. In other words, order and currents are inseparable. The question therefore is what is the current? Biology and behaviorism should be consumed with this question. Meanwhile biology and behaviorism says that order is the result of intention in service to an underlying genetic compulsion. Therefore if behaviorism and biology want to reconcile their theories with the Constructal law, the exchange and the perpetuation of genes must be the current.

A current is the movement of something, anything, it could be an object of mass, a liquid, a stream of electricity, an idea, and of course a gene. And this movement always follows a spreading branching architecture that vascularizes whatever area it is flowing through. It ultimately saturates that area so that flow is eased and access is enhanced, otherwise it cannot persist over time. All order evolves according to this architecture. This is inarguable. Genes can mutate all they want, but they must always configure their expression so that it renders a spreading tree-like architecture. Furthermore, they must always mutate so that the order they configure always meshes with every other order that is likewise configured around a current. But note that behaviorism and biology have been arguing for decades that the order which persists over time in the animal kingdom (such as canine social structure), is due to the mathematics of gene replication, that the proliferation of one gene as opposed to another results from a competition between genes that vary at random. Those traits that are most suited to a given climate or competitive pressure have an advantage and eventually occupy a greater share of the genome. This contravenes Constructal law because it explicitly states that enhancement of flow does not result from a competition. It results from objects of resistance becoming incorporated into the configuration.

These days behaviorism has modified the dominance theory to mean that a dog has an intention to maintain access to a resource, and again in service to the perpetuation of its genes. Learning theorists also argue that behavioral structure, i.e. the capacity to learn, the capacity of an individual to perpetuate itself over time, are due to high cognition, a problem solving capacity to conduct a cost/benefit analysis of various options. But the Constructal law demonstrates that this is faulty reasoning. What we perceive of as dominance is a vascular structure, it cannot possibly be about controlling access to a resource because by definition it has to be about enhancing the flow–FOR THE ENTIRE STRUCTURE. If a dog becomes fixated on a particular resource the only accurate statement that can be made is that the dog’s behavior is the structure sprouting a new “branch” in order to enhance flow, that’s it. Anything else is story telling. The only coherent explanation must be predicated on this flow logic rather than a logic of gene replication or reinforcements according to consequences.

The purpose of the structure is to saturate an “area;” be it a physical space or an expanse of time. It is a branching architecture that intimately entwines the individual with all other currents moving through other branching architectures. It is not due to a random process of genetic mutations and is not due to cognition because this spreading architecture predates by billions of years the existence of genes or cognition. This makes genes a suspect candidate as the current. Also modern behaviorism which derives its intellectual sustenance from Neo-Darwinism says that evolution has no direction. But this is also contradicted by Constructal law. As Bejan points out, were we to replay the evolutionary tape, we would get the same basic outcomes, from anatomy, locomotion, behavior and social structure and with the same basic mix of species variability that we have today because the evolution of all things is predicated on a current that is constantly improving its flow through a design predicated on a branching architecture. The evolutionary process is not random, it works according to principles of physics as opposed to an abstract mathematical rationale of gene replication. Gene replication is likewise a part of this Constructal process, but it is not driving it, it is subsumed by it. Furthermore, all flows confluence into the one overarching flow. Genes can’t possibly do this because unless genes are being culled, or transmitted through sexual recombination, then no genes are in transaction in the vast majority of interactions between individuals. And we must also remember that gene replication is not scalable since the genes of one species are not necessarily transferable to another species.

For this and other reasons reinforcement theory does not have a coherent definition of information. Saying that a reinforcement is that which increases the frequency of a given action, is not a flow statement. It is not scalable because it can’t answer why what is a reinforcement for a lion, isn’t a reinforcement for a gazelle. In a flow system, the fundamental unit of information is a principle of conductivity, a principle that also encodes for its improvement over time. It is not the standard 0 or 1 binary value, or the capacity to evaluate two equal alternatives, or a gene that is slightly more adaptive than another gene. The principle of conductivity as information is scalable. (For example the Constructal law shows the same principle is responsible for the locomotion of birds, animals, insects and fishes, as well as trucks, trains, and airplanes.) The prime unit is consonant with the most advanced complicated construct, like an intricate Lego structure built with a set of standardized blocks. Whereas behavioral/gene replication theory gets more and more complex as it must constantly paper over this internal inconsistency. (See “The Red Queen” or “Why Sex Is Fun” for convoluted theories as to the evolution of sexuality.)

Eric mentions efficiency as a means of reconciling Neo-Darwinian theory (on which learning theory draws its intellectual sustenance) with the Constructal law. But efficiency is not synonymous with flow and its enhancement. The story of evolution isn’t efficiency, the story of evolution is turning CHANGE into information, i.e. enhanced flow. For example American car companies in the seventies and eighties became ultra efficient by making interchangeable parts across model lines. This significantly lowered production costs but eventually what made an Oldsmobile different from a Buick, Pontiac or Chevy, became the badge on the hood and some glossy fender work. I can remember the uproar when it was discovered that Cadillacs were being powered by Chevy engines. When the consumer realized this, each brand lost emotional value and they turned to foreign cars because they had distinctive handling and styling characteristics which made them substantially different from other makes of cars. In the interest of efficiency, American car companies violated the principle of a branching architecture which itself is derived from a principle of motion, to wit: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. By being less efficient, but more polarized, they could have persisted longer over time. (Anyone seen a new Oldsmobile, Pontiac or Saturn lately?) This distinction between flow and efficiency further disqualifies genes as candidate for the current. Genes are “self” motivated, they can’t embrace the full architecture by which all of nature is interconnected.

Of course genes are part of evolution but their most likely role would be to lock in a particular flow configuration so that it can be passed through time. Genes are not the agency by which the configuration evolves. The configuration evolves IN THE MOMENT because the current flows IN THE MOMENT. And the only plausible candidate for the current around which the animal mind configures is emotion. The configuration emerges and improves by way of emotion becoming unresolved emotion (stress) and then resolved emotion: E->UE->RE, this is the full statement of the principle of emotional conductivity and paradoxically as it might first appear, E->UE->RE is the most basic unit of information. (Thus the car we buy resolves some layer of stress we carry.)

The emerging science of Epigenetics is beginning to illuminate the role that emotion plays over genetics. Epigenetics shows that the timing of a gene’s expression is more vital than the gene itself and that the biochemicals affiliated with stress inhibit the expression of genes. Emotion becoming unresolved by meeting with objects of resistance, and then resolved by importing these objects into the configuration, is how the energetic principles of nature shape and fine tune genetic expression so as to adapt to the environment. Social structures are statements of resolved emotion. Eventually genes reflect these shifts.

Finally Eric repeats the common behavioral refrain that emotion-as-energy is not measurable. But the truth is that  science measures emotion-as-energy every day. Every brain scan, blood chemistry assay, hormonal surge obtained in lab experiments is measured and recorded but then it is misinterpreted as being in service to the mathematics of gene replication. Science misinterprets this data because it is reductionist and is not trying to construct a model. Whereas if we were to secure a dog to a post and stimulate him with a prey object and then measure every variable in its mind and body, the resulting data would constitute full energization. We would have an emotional baseline, we would have identified the main channel draining the emotional watershed that constitutes animal consciousness. And then if we were to do the same tests with all other aspects of its existence so that we could compare the values of these various emotional states, we will find a spreading architecture, with hard mathematical and biochemical correlates, configured around the main emotional current, the predator–>prey module as the chief conduit of emotion.

Also in regards to an “unmeasurable other current:” consider, that if someone talks to a psychiatrist about what they are feeling, describing their internal emotional states and how these impact their minds, the good doctor gives this direct testimony a lot of weight in the formulation of a remedial program. Direct testimony is part of the current scientific approach to understanding emotion. It is a clinical research tool (Kagan; “What Is Emotion?”). Likewise, if cultures around the world describe in great detail the energy-like impacts of emotional experience, we should also give this direct testimony great weight in the formulation of a theory of emotion. Every culture speaks of emotion as a current, as in for example the common expression: “emotional juices flowing.” This vast aggregate of experience edits out subjective impressionability. And then if the signature of an electric, magnetic and gravitational charge can also be detected in the behavior of animals, and if interpreting animals in light of the immediate-moment, which means emotion-as-energy, is the only means of analysis which has to date rendered a model, this is further corroboration of such evidence.

Dogs do not learn by reinforcement. A behavior is reinforced in terms of how it contributes or detracts from a spreading architecture. In other words, everything dogs learn is in terms of a social matrix, a construct that always has increased sociability as its norm, no matter the particular consequences of the dog’s experience.

Behaviorism, your turn. What is the current?

Related posts:

1. Constructal law and the Canine Mind This may be the only site applying the Constructal law...
2. Constructal Law   “Animals are no different than we are. They move...
3. The Debate Over Training Methods Also on Dog Star Daily is an article by Roger...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

“I’m proud to present this guest post by my mentor and colleague, Kevin Behan, originator of Natural Dog Training, which views the canine mind as an energy (i.e., emotional) system rather than as a thinking machine, or by projecting the human concepts of dominance and submission onto canine behavior. Those of us who use NDT techniques find that they’re very effective for training obedience commands and for solving behavioral problems that can’t be solved by more traditional methods.

In this post, Behan applies the principles of a new scientific concept—The Construcal Law—to the co-evolutionary paths of canids and hominids.”

The Flow of Evolution
From unknown beginnings, the relationship between dog and man is constantly evolving to render more and more ways of service.

There are many dogs like the ones being used by the Indiana Crisis Response Team—headed by Dr. Jean Marie Thompson—who are deployed in disaster and crisis situations to help victims cope with emotional trauma. The dogs seek out those who are experiencing PTSD or other (dis)affective disorders. And there is an observable and measurable effect as the dog engages with the victim.

Meanwhile canine cognition labs around the world are conducting experiments to elucidate how dogs have become so attuned to human beings that they seem to have developed a capacity for empathy.

But is this kind of empathy a form of emotional contagion or a form of higher cognition? Or is it something else entirely?

Keep Reading on Psychology Today

Additional Articles:

Kevin Behan YouTube Interview with Edwin Rutsch on Empathy

Lee Charles Kelley YouTube Interview with Edwin Rutsch on Empathy 

Related posts:

1. Dog Star Daily I think Roger Abrantes is the best expositor of the...
2. The Unknown Scientist An unknown scientist has a website with an article entitled,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

From Dog Star Daily:

http://www.dogstardaily.com/blogs/do-dogs-have-self-respect#comments

Roger Abrantes: “Emotions, Behan’s favorite elements to explain behavior, are difficult to deal with because we cannot objectively observe, register, describe or measure them. Your guess is as good as mine and they both can be terribly wrong. This doesn’t mean we should discard emotions and the like, only that we should handle them with extreme care.”

“We must distinguish between what we reasonably can claim to know and what we presume or assume. I’m not advocating an ultra-extremist scientific approach trashing all that can’t be proved without further consideration, but I cannot endorse either wild guesses and fairy tales that will open for all possible political and religious manipulation. It’s all a question of balance, as I see it.”

So is Abrantes’ admonition reasonable and conservative? What constitutes a wild guess or fairy tale?

One thing we all agree on given the evidence as well as personal experience, is that animals experience emotion. There isn’t human emotion versus animal emotion any more than there is human versus animal gravity. But if this is true, then it can’t be prudent to advance the theory that dogs organize in a dominance hierarchy in order to ensure access to resources and for the proliferation of genes, without first situating emotion into a model alongside instinct, feelings and thought. We can’t say on the one hand that we don’t know the role emotion plays in social behavior, but we do know the role dominance plays. The two statements are contradictory. By even the most conservative and/or clinical metrics emotion is a pretty big deal in the life of an animal. Therefore if one doesn’t know the former, one cannot state the latter. Holding a theory of behavior while at the same time not having a full fledged model for emotion, is like having a theory for how a plane flies without quite understanding why there is lift under the wings; or promulgating a theory for the behavior of electrons while setting aside the phenomenon of magnetism. One isn’t handling the subject of emotion with care if it is being excised from its rightful place in the discussion.

Furthermore leaving emotion in abeyance is not neutral. Many preconceived and biased notions about emotion are left free to run wild. Unexamined and untested assumptions end up manipulating an interpretation of the evidence into a “personality theory.” See link below:

http://naturaldogtraining.com/blog/energy-theory-vs-personality-theory/

Personality theories become the stuff of dogma. Dogma becomes theology.

Until a model for emotion is proposed, all one can reasonably say is that nothing definitive can be said. There might be dominance, there might not be. Order might actually be the effect of emotional affect. Without a model for emotion, we are just guessing.

So then is there an accurate tool for carefully assessing emotion? I argue there is: just as the bodies of animals and humans are equally subject to gravity, the minds of animals and human beings are equally subject to emotion. Paradoxically as it might first appear, our most subjective sense of experience can become our most objective tool of inquiry, if that is, we learn to separate what we think from what we feel, to parse apart the influence of instinct from the influence of emotion. And the best way to learn this is by not projecting thoughts onto the minds of dogs. It’s an  immediate-moment manner of analysis; an exercise in logic, not soothsaying.

An immediate-moment inquiry reveals that emotion is a universal, undifferentiated, “force” of attraction, an understanding that can thereby render precise distinctions between thoughts, instincts and feelings. Mainstream behaviorism in contrast takes everything going on within the body/mind and lumps it together as one thing, and then labels it depending on context. It comes up with “dominance,” “submission,” “territoriality,” “herding instinct,” “learning-by-association,” all of which are intention laden. Modern behaviorism relies on a psychology to hold it all together in the face of the inevitable inconsistencies, anomalies and outright contradictions. However once emotion comes into view as a monolithic “force” of attraction, instincts, feelings and thoughts stand in relief against this background. Sexuality, personality, learning, play, evolution, begin to unfold as logical extensions of emotion-as-energy within a multi-tiered flow system, nature evolving as a whole, rather than a jumble of disconnected parts colliding randomly and sorting themselves out according to human reason (such as survival, territoriality, reproductive privileges, access to resources, dominance, submission, etc., etc.). The laws of nature around which the physical movement of all objects is organized, turn out to be the same principles around which the emotional movement of all beings are organized. Nothing could be more logical and more consistent with Darwin’s theory of evolution by way of common descent. Since all forms of life have a common ancestor, it stands to reason there should be a common operating system to all forms of consciousness. I propose emotion is the physical embodiment of the laws of nature which then serves as the operating system of the animal mind.

The immediate-moment method of analysis is a system of logic that yields a way of seeing and interpreting the evidence. It is not conjecture or even subjective. It doesn’t matter what I think about the evidence, simply whether or not any and all behavior can logically fit into one model. I believe the immediate-moment approach is intellectually more rigorous and logically consistent than current biological theory.

And the track record of the immediate-moment method of analysis? It presaged emergence theory, epigenetics (as in the interplay between emotion and stress—i.e. unresolved emotion—computes for genetic variability and distributes genes and makes the environment and social context a player in genetic expression) and is consistent with Control theory and now the Constructal law, a recently discovered first principle of physics (“Design In Nature” by Adrian Bejan) to which even the behavior of animals must subscribe. The arbitrary line between biology and physics has been erased. Modern behaviorism is inconsistent with the Constructal law because it argues that social order is the result of the drive to replicate genes. Whereas thirty-plus years ago the immediate-moment analysis of behavior perceived that the flow of emotion-as-energy is the source of social order with genes being its manner of transmission through time.

Postulating that emotion is a universal, monolithic “force” of attraction does not answer every question about the animal mind any more than  understanding gravity as a universal, monolithic “force” of attraction answers every question about the universe. It merely opens the door to a deeper level of investigation.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

http://constructalcaninemind.wordpress.com/

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Dario Maestripieri, Ph.D 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201203/social-dominance-explained-part-i

……… the author states: “Dominance doesn’t exist because it’s beneficial to the species, the community, or the family. Dominance is established within a relationship because it has a “net” benefit to each individual, which means that its benefits are greater than its costs.”

Dr. Maestripieri is trying to set up a logical framework whereby the dynamic between two individuals is unrelated to the dynamic within a family, a community, or within the species, and yet this is in direct contravention of the constructal law. The relationship between two individuals cannot in its persistent structure be independent of the pack, the species, the ecosystem, or nature at large, because all structure whether it be waterways, plant anatomy, lightning bolts, physiology, anatomy, neurology, civilization, or aesthetics, conforms to the constructal law. Using the tools and language of mainstream science, “Design In Nature” inarguably lays the dominance theory to rest because the “net benefit” to any individual is whether they can participate in the flow of whatever system they are affiliated with. There cannot be a benefit to one relationship, that can fall outside the scope of other benefits to other constituents of that system. To participate in flow, each and every individual must be aligned in their behavior and their personality around the central flow pattern of their group, hive, flock, school, swarm, etc, etc. Otherwise, the physiology and neurology of any living thing is composed so that they will feel overwhelmed by resistance. It’s the law.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Zane, J. Peder; Bejan, Adrian (2012-01-24). Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization (Kindle Locations 1560-1564). Random House, Inc..

DIN: “One of the most powerful insights born from the constructal law is that social systems are natural designs that emerge and evolve to facilitate the flow of the currents they represent on the landscape.”

“As my Duke University colleague the sociologist Gilbert W. Merkx has written, this constructal perspective differs significantly from dominant approaches in the social sciences, which assume that structure is a given that sets the context for social action or transaction. Structures are seen as static and transactions as dynamic.”

“Constructal theory sees social structures (economies, governments, educational institutions, etc.) as flow systems that are dynamic, not static. Structure is not viewed as stable. Rather than being taken as given, the living flow structure is always in flux, ever evolving to provide better and better flow access. The evolution of flow structures reflects the interaction between time and the environment. The environment is important because it also evolves, altering the parameters within which flow occurs. Thus the environment is an essential dimension of any given flow structure. The environment, in turn, can be defined as a series of overlapping and interwoven flows that interact in space and time.”

“Although it (hierarchy) has received a bad rap as a symbol of inequality, hierarchy is essential to good design. Instead of providing advantages to one entity to the detriment of another, it arises naturally because it benefits the entire flow system, whether it is all the water in a river basin or all the people in a society. Hierarchy evolves  because good flow often involves multiscale architectures—that is, channels of varying sizes.”

KB: In “NDT”  I proposed that the specific roles that wolves perform in the hunt, (active/reactive—direct/indirect) are emotional polarities rather than a directed strategy and that furthermore these correspond to the spectrum of personalities that wolves display in the pack (likewise a function of active/reactive—direct/indirect). How wolves align around the prey is (1) a computation of resistance relative to attraction (active/reactive) and (2) angles of deflection (direct/indirect). Wolves relative to a prey of high resistance radiate across a spectrum and then synchronize with what the prey is doing. The prey moves and the group responds as a whole, a new computation of change, like an electrical input to a battery with an internal ionizing affects that lead to external polarizing effects. Each configuration around the prey represents a social order that evolves in real time and in tune with external circumstances. This is the real source of canine pack structure as well as the behavioral plasticity that allows for the domestic dog’s inexhaustible adaptability. These capacities have historically having been misattributed to a dominance hierarchy and the higher aspects of cognition. However, the highly stressed interactions we see between members of the pack are in reality paralyzed emotional caricatures of the prey-making repertoire we observe in the hunt. Pack instincts are paralyzed prey-making instincts. The wolves in the pack are not learning cooperation, but are being imprinted with a limit on cooperation, i.e. if the resistance is too high it is not safe to go forward. (Note that in the domestic context, everything we want our dog to do is ALWAYS the path of highest resistance.)

Why is the “dominant” individual feeling paralyzed by the “submissive?” Because the subordinate is generating the appearance of a preyful emotionally attractive stimulus, BUT IT IS NOT ACTING LIKE ONE. A “submissive” is indirectly being aggressive, actively confronting and bearing in on the superordinate.

So the hunt comes first, the social comes second. The capacity to cope with the stress of pack life comes by way of the facsimiles of the prey/resistance (direct/reactive) predator state relative to (active/indirect) prey state. Every configuration of the group around the prey is a complex hierarchy of feelings (desire relative to inhibition) which then makes a complex social life possible. The social structure of pack life solidifies around this dynamic system of flux.

This same pattern of prey/predator expressed via Direct/Indirect—Active/Reactive can be found in all animal interactions, the behavioral plasticity varying between individuals and species according to their emotional capacity. Some low capacity individuals can on occasion exhibit a high capacity response and seemingly transcend their genetics when they happen to find themselves in a context that is for any number of reasons highly conductive. So the environment can increase conductivity as for example a concert hall with excellent acoustics can improve a singer’s ability to hit a difficult note. In YDIYM this principle is elaborated into the notion that the group is like a computer with environmental inputs becoming social information, i.e. a change in the environment changes the way an individual feels about other individuals. It also extends to picking up a latent emotional charge in others and then getting it moving either through an expression of this energy into action, or even of a reaction to it that manifests as personality. Hence an owner’s dog becomes their mirror.

The negative (predatory aspect–resistance to emotion) grants access to the positive (preyful aspect–emotionally conductive). In other words, the eyes grant access to the body, this is an access channel. For example, a cat stalking the mouse becomes emotionally paralyzed when the mouse looks up from foraging; access denied. Then the mouse puts its head down and continues to forage, access granted, the stalk resumes. Due to this inherent structure (force of attraction relative to degree of resistance) the animal perceives the world in terms of paths of resistance of varying intensity, and access channels (negatives) that trigger stress (unresolved emotion) and which can then possibly afford its release and conversion into resolved emotion. Every interaction between any two beings, be it parent/offspring, male/female, prey/predator, peer-to-peer, are all prey/predator dualities on a universal gradient of desire relative to inhibition i.e paths of resistance, according to the main emotional conduit, the prey/making urge. Just as any watershed has but one main channel, the animal mind likewise has but one main channel, i.e. emotion moves from the predator polarity (high pressure) to the prey polarity (low pressure). It’s all one flow circuit that computes a hierarchy of “little wants” as a state of alignment around one “Big Want” —i.e. to resolve unresolved emotion. All species of animals, and all animal interactions are a “multiscale architecture; channels of varying sizes.”

DIN: “This finding leads to another insight that debunks conventional wisdom: Hierarchy arises because it is good for every component of the global flow system. The big need the small just as surely as the small need the big. The individual sustains the crowd—and vice versa. The big river sustains the many tiny streams of the river basin, just as those tiny streams feed the river basin. Citizens (the rivulets of politics) sustain the governments that serve them; workers (the rivulets of business) sustain the companies that employ and, in turn, sustain them. The urge to organize is selfish.”

“While the prevailing Darwinian model of evolution makes some room for the idea of cooperation, it is based chiefly on the idea of struggle among individuals—the “good me” against my bad neighbors and society. Organisms compete with one another for scarce resources; we compete with the environment, etc. It is, largely, a tale of winners and losers. The constructal law, however, reveals that the movement toward harmony, toward flowing together and in balance, is the central tendency of design in nature.”

KB: In NDT I wrote that not only is there no drive to compete, but there is also no desire to please, and yet the strongest drive in the canine mind is to be in harmony. The animal mind must work toward harmony because otherwise an individual will end up holding a charge and will sense itself to be incomplete and separate from its surroundings. When an organism is charged we will indeed see friction commensurate with the intensity of the charge, but this is not competition. Even if the friction seems to be over a resource, the resource is merely serving as a trigger in order to move an old charge. Because the animal mind involuntarily projects its “self” (physical center-of-gravity plus physical memory) onto what it is attracted to, an animal feels it IS what it is attracted to. (What-I-Want + How-I-Feel = Who-I-AM) Therefore given the construct of the animal mind we can resolve the seeming paradox of altruism having evolved in a fractious world of friction simply by noting the utter selflessness of abject selfishness. The governing factor is emotional capacity.

DIN: (In a study of language and word usage) “They found that about 135 words account for half of all the words used in English. Think about it: We don’t say “ameliorate” or “egregious” very often. No one would argue that “to” and “of” have outcompeted “ameliorate” and “egregious.” They have not emerged victorious in a Darwinian struggle, a dictionary war. The truth is that a hierarchy of words has emerged naturally. This becomes clear when we recognize that in written and spoken communication, words and sentences are the channels that carry the currents that represent the thoughts and feelings we wish to express. In order to spread this current efficiently, a hierarchy of channels has evolved of large channels (“to,” “of”) and small channels (“egregious,” “ameliorate”), all of which are necessary for the flow of information, and for our own flow (movement) on the globe.”

KB: Exactly, the logic gates in our computers are not competing with other logic gates in our computer for electrons. Electrical energy courses through the network of logic gates in a system wide flow pattern that makes the computer a coherent energy circuit. Likewise, what we misinterpret as competition over resources, is actually friction because emotion isn’t moving smoothly enough, and this friction differentiates organisms into the two prime temperament traits, prey and predator, so that emotion can move again. This intrinsically motivates each individual to synchronize with others because if an animal is unable to move emotion without resistance, they end up with more emotional charge and sense themselves to be more incomplete than before the interaction. This is why it’s more pleasing for a dog to herd sheep in harmony with the sheep and the sheep herder than it is to kill a sheep. In other words, every being is like a singular point of mass (carriers of stress as an emotional charge) and the universal motive is to become a wave (feeling of harmony). Even if one dog were to kill another dog over a bone and attain unassailable supremacy, because the losing dog did not purely conduct the charge as a prey animal would have, the victor will end up with even more of a charge than it began with and it will find itself falling into an addictive cycle of violence that makes it more and more charged and hence incomplete. Furthermore while this will not end well for a dog so afflicted, nevertheless from a larger frame of reference the charge is being faithfully reproduced and continually transmitted until somewhere down the line it will ultimately be resolved and converted into a wave, i.e. two individuals in emotional counterbalance with each other and feeling release around said charge.

The computer and the internet evolved exactly as did consciousness. Information (emotion) is compressed into dense code (stress) so that it can more efficiently radiate in bulk and without error throughout the network and through Time. Animals are charged particles of consciousness and genes merely construct the “radios” so as to pick up the signal and convert it back into legible, coherent information, resolved emotion. Animals and birds synchronize with each other in order to turn stress into a wave, just as an internet browser decompresses packets of dense code and converts it into legible text, sounds and images on a users’ monitor. All thoughts, instincts, sensations and feelings, are subsidiary to this main emotional channel, E–>UE–>RE, the river of life that unites the watershed of consciousness with the ocean of consciousness.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I think chapter six will prove to be the most critical chapter as in how the constructal law intersects with animal behavior. Today we find a reinvigoration of the debate over dominance. The last several decades the positive, learning theorists have been arguing there’s no such thing as dominance and taken it to the level of political correctness. Now the clinically minded scientists are pushing back and coming up with various syntheses as they try to account for social fluidity, and so they postulate a hierarchy concerned with control over resources rather than a strict social caste system. This book definitively answers the question from an engineering/mathematical highly scientific point of view. There’s no such thing as dominance. Rather there’s a flow system around which every hierarchal arrangement evolves.

This then returns us to the question, what is going on inside the dog’s mind when it’s posturing over a food bowl in a menacing display, or when it’s going belly up as a bellicose dog approaches? Again, I’m arguing that within every dog’s mind no matter the interaction, there is a flow dynamic, i.e. emotion moving toward a preyful aspect and either meeting with resistance or not. The main objection I’ve encountered over the years to my line of reasoning is that this is too simplistic to account for complexity. This book should put that objection to rest as it definitively shows how the anatomy and physiology of every living organism, the path of a lightning bolt, the branching structure of a tree and bush, the trend of evolution, the organization structure of the U.S. Army or corporation, all subscribe to the same flow pattern. So if the constructal law predicts the organization of structure at every level of activity, then surely what’s going on inside the dog’s mind must reflect this hierarchal architecture as well. YDIYM argues that not only is there a hierarchy of feelings within a group of dogs, but also between dog and owner as well. This hierarchy configures itself like a chorale. No two voices are exactly alike, but they vary according to the same principle of flow (in fact, due to way the animal mind is constructed, even two voices that are exactly the same will differ when in the presence of the other. In other words, the more alike two things are, the more they stress each other until one is forced to flip to the equal but opposite polarity in order for either to experience pure flow. This is the dynamic role that stress plays in the flow system. It may be latent, but it is never dormant.) The members of the choir will sort themselves out until they find the best arrangement that produce the most powerful harmonic sound, an experience of harmony that no one singer can attain on their own. If they don’t, there will be discord and various instincts (which are themselves caricatures or facsimiles of the main channel) will manage the interrupt in order to limit the loss of flow.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.