Two things came to mind for me as I read this. One - the impact of touch (or lack) on early childhood physical and emotional development. Huge. So important. I read a news-human-interest (not rigorous science) type story about "kangaroo care," cuddling premature or drug-addicted infants on bare skin. I think some thoughts on the impact were about temperature regulation, maybe microbiome, and probably some skin-skin chemical signals.
I was also reminded in reading this about my acupuncturist's description of the body as a big sensor array. If we paid attention we can feel the impact of specific touch (location, temperature, texture, etc) on seemingly unrelated well-being. She'd often place needles and ask me what came to mind. A recurring theme was feeling like a superhero, or images of sunshine on my face. Placebo? Maybe! But did I feel better? Yes!!!
Oh, totally. Kangaroo care is good for all infants, as is touch in general. We evolved in times when babies were essentially carried in arms or slings basically all the time for a long period, and all that touch is "expected" by our brains for normal, pro-social development at an epigenetic level. It's one of the things we get kind of wrong in modern times.
Also, I totally believe it about the sensor array. Basically I figure that our entire bodies are a sensor array for our brains to navigate the world. And I wouldn't be at all surprised about the way certain kinds of touch bring up various good (or bad, I suppose) images and feelings.
What a beautiful essay provoking so many thoughts!
With regards to the body and the soul being one and the same, I very much like Spinoza's view of human mind being the idea of the human body. Both mind and body are attributes of God with God showing her/his essence in the only two different ways that are available to us to appreciate. The only way a human mind is able to experience the extended world is via the human body's modifications by the world. When we touch something, the modification to our body imposed by the touch allows us to experience the material world in a unique and, as you pointed out, often underappreciated way. According to Spinoza, we experience pleasure each time we learn something new about nature that, based on some interpretations of his work, is identical to God. Experiencing the extended world through touch for those of us largely ignoring this unique way of experience, is a sure way to get immense pleasure if we focus and meditate enough on it!
On another note, as a physician I am witnessing how the avoidance of touch in medical practice has lead to some degree of deterioration of a doctor-patient relationship. In my training in the early 2000s we were still trained to hold a patient's hand and to hug the patient when giving the bad news. We were advised not to wear gloves when seeing an HIV positive patient to put the patient at ease by letting them know without saying a word that we don't see them as an infectious threat. I don't see much of it happening these days, not in my field of neurology anyway. We see patients masked up and gloved up. Holding a patient's hand or hugging a patient is considered to be inappropriate and unadvisable in many cases from the medicolegal standpoint. We tend to treat our patients as customers rather than fellow human beings who suffer and are in a dire need of physical and emotional help. Most doctors certainly display genuine empathy and care with their faces and the tone of voice, but there is something truly unique and intimate about holding a sick person's hand in one's own UNGLOVED hand that the facial expression or voice would never be able convey...
Oh my goodness, so much here! First, I'm so glad you enjoyed this. :) :) Second, I haven't studied really any Spinoza beyond the small exposure I had in an undergrad philosophy class, so that was really interesting to hear. Maybe I should spend some time with him. (So many interesting things, so little time!)
Third, wow, it's such a loss not to have direct touch be routine anymore. But what really struck me was your comment that the medical profession tends to treat people as customers these days. I think that's a very widespread trend--it's pervasive in higher ed too, which is what I know--and I think it corrupts everything. The corruption works slowly, but like water eroding rock it's subtle and inexorable. I think individual professors don't treat students as customers, but institutions use the "customer" model to make policy decisions. And (to be dramatic) it's corroding everything. Sigh.
So true. It has been quite a long time since I was in college, I am sure things have changed since that time... I also think that dramatic decline in enrollment in humanities signifies something very important and worrisome: our education system is largely aimed at producing conforming individuals who are good at very specialized and narrow type of thinking that is rewarded financially. Literature, philosophy, and history majors are unable to find well paying jobs but young people who tend to naturally gravitate towards those fields are the free thinkers that tend to come up with groundbreaking ideas! That being said, do I have a right to even talk about this being a physician who did not go into humanities? Perhaps I do as my older daughter does seem to be one of those "free spirits" who might perhaps ( I hope!!) study philosophy or literature when she grows up :)
Haha, if you've read more Spinoza than I have, then I think you have a right to talk. :) Just because we don't choose to focus on philosophy or literature doesn't mean we don't ALSO enjoy and care about them. The world is so interesting. And I personally want a physician who's also well-rounded!
But yes, the decline in humanities enrollment is real--and also mistaken. I do keep hearing that tech companies and other businesses actually want humanities people because they're good problem solvers. But somehow that message just doesn't get out to the public and permeate people's thinking. I tend to be an optimist, so I hope the pendulum swings back someday, but I really don't know if it will. I did hear someone in a webinar recently say that philosophy was the new hot major, which surprised me, but I guess there are folks who think that it's really good for using AI effectively. Which I guess is what we're going to have to learn to do...
Two things came to mind for me as I read this. One - the impact of touch (or lack) on early childhood physical and emotional development. Huge. So important. I read a news-human-interest (not rigorous science) type story about "kangaroo care," cuddling premature or drug-addicted infants on bare skin. I think some thoughts on the impact were about temperature regulation, maybe microbiome, and probably some skin-skin chemical signals.
I was also reminded in reading this about my acupuncturist's description of the body as a big sensor array. If we paid attention we can feel the impact of specific touch (location, temperature, texture, etc) on seemingly unrelated well-being. She'd often place needles and ask me what came to mind. A recurring theme was feeling like a superhero, or images of sunshine on my face. Placebo? Maybe! But did I feel better? Yes!!!
Oh, totally. Kangaroo care is good for all infants, as is touch in general. We evolved in times when babies were essentially carried in arms or slings basically all the time for a long period, and all that touch is "expected" by our brains for normal, pro-social development at an epigenetic level. It's one of the things we get kind of wrong in modern times.
Also, I totally believe it about the sensor array. Basically I figure that our entire bodies are a sensor array for our brains to navigate the world. And I wouldn't be at all surprised about the way certain kinds of touch bring up various good (or bad, I suppose) images and feelings.
What a beautiful essay provoking so many thoughts!
With regards to the body and the soul being one and the same, I very much like Spinoza's view of human mind being the idea of the human body. Both mind and body are attributes of God with God showing her/his essence in the only two different ways that are available to us to appreciate. The only way a human mind is able to experience the extended world is via the human body's modifications by the world. When we touch something, the modification to our body imposed by the touch allows us to experience the material world in a unique and, as you pointed out, often underappreciated way. According to Spinoza, we experience pleasure each time we learn something new about nature that, based on some interpretations of his work, is identical to God. Experiencing the extended world through touch for those of us largely ignoring this unique way of experience, is a sure way to get immense pleasure if we focus and meditate enough on it!
On another note, as a physician I am witnessing how the avoidance of touch in medical practice has lead to some degree of deterioration of a doctor-patient relationship. In my training in the early 2000s we were still trained to hold a patient's hand and to hug the patient when giving the bad news. We were advised not to wear gloves when seeing an HIV positive patient to put the patient at ease by letting them know without saying a word that we don't see them as an infectious threat. I don't see much of it happening these days, not in my field of neurology anyway. We see patients masked up and gloved up. Holding a patient's hand or hugging a patient is considered to be inappropriate and unadvisable in many cases from the medicolegal standpoint. We tend to treat our patients as customers rather than fellow human beings who suffer and are in a dire need of physical and emotional help. Most doctors certainly display genuine empathy and care with their faces and the tone of voice, but there is something truly unique and intimate about holding a sick person's hand in one's own UNGLOVED hand that the facial expression or voice would never be able convey...
Oh my goodness, so much here! First, I'm so glad you enjoyed this. :) :) Second, I haven't studied really any Spinoza beyond the small exposure I had in an undergrad philosophy class, so that was really interesting to hear. Maybe I should spend some time with him. (So many interesting things, so little time!)
Third, wow, it's such a loss not to have direct touch be routine anymore. But what really struck me was your comment that the medical profession tends to treat people as customers these days. I think that's a very widespread trend--it's pervasive in higher ed too, which is what I know--and I think it corrupts everything. The corruption works slowly, but like water eroding rock it's subtle and inexorable. I think individual professors don't treat students as customers, but institutions use the "customer" model to make policy decisions. And (to be dramatic) it's corroding everything. Sigh.
So true. It has been quite a long time since I was in college, I am sure things have changed since that time... I also think that dramatic decline in enrollment in humanities signifies something very important and worrisome: our education system is largely aimed at producing conforming individuals who are good at very specialized and narrow type of thinking that is rewarded financially. Literature, philosophy, and history majors are unable to find well paying jobs but young people who tend to naturally gravitate towards those fields are the free thinkers that tend to come up with groundbreaking ideas! That being said, do I have a right to even talk about this being a physician who did not go into humanities? Perhaps I do as my older daughter does seem to be one of those "free spirits" who might perhaps ( I hope!!) study philosophy or literature when she grows up :)
Haha, if you've read more Spinoza than I have, then I think you have a right to talk. :) Just because we don't choose to focus on philosophy or literature doesn't mean we don't ALSO enjoy and care about them. The world is so interesting. And I personally want a physician who's also well-rounded!
But yes, the decline in humanities enrollment is real--and also mistaken. I do keep hearing that tech companies and other businesses actually want humanities people because they're good problem solvers. But somehow that message just doesn't get out to the public and permeate people's thinking. I tend to be an optimist, so I hope the pendulum swings back someday, but I really don't know if it will. I did hear someone in a webinar recently say that philosophy was the new hot major, which surprised me, but I guess there are folks who think that it's really good for using AI effectively. Which I guess is what we're going to have to learn to do...