Vis-a-vis yesterday's discussions, listen to this story from NPR in re: community organizing amidst the disaster in Haiti. Consider how folk activities like playing dominoes or singing sacred songs functions to maintain social ties. In a sense, sacred songs have a narrative role as well: helping to make sense of trouble and endure hardship. Note also, that the story repeatedly compares this phenomenon with New Orleans after Katrina.
In a related story, consider how the "international community" participates in helping Haiti. Is this a kind of grooming behavior? We talked about the high ranking member of a community maintaining the well-being of lower status members. "Still, even the impoverished West African nation of Liberia is sending help..."
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My instinctive reaction is that while there may be elements of it being a grooming behavior, or at the very least one which has to do with maintaining certain kinds of group dynamics, on an individual level I think that if we are to speak of it as grooming, then the self-groom is the predominant element.
ReplyDeleteWe give to feel good. Given there seems to be some kind of argument that the rank and relational grooming behaviors are emergent because of their effect on seratonin/endorphin/dopamine type levels, then I see giving as a way of ministering to ourselves (I don't have the neurochemistry grounding to argue too coherently here!).
I think the reasons why "to give feels good" are interesting. I'd consider assuaging cultural guilt as one, as it reduces a state which presumably has a negative effect on happy brain chemistry. Then I'd include being part of a group response which might be a happy brain booster, perhaps because of attention received, or other benefits of the sense of community. Next I would turn to the theories which suggest that we may produce similar neural responses when witnessing an action as we would when carrying out the action (the much debated mirror neuron). Extrapoloating wildly and probably inaccurately from the small amount I've read about mirror neurons, I would suggest that giving relieves our brain somewhat of the burdens we have taken on through empathy which is potentially the result of this neural recognition (not the same sense as Lockes).
In any case, its the complexity of why we might experience something as a positive mental state booster (which is all we seem to be saying is the meaning of the word groom, if we can groom both verbally and physically, and can even self groom) which interests me, more than the fact of grooming itself.
Wow, this is a puzzle! Do we come together in hard times because we are empathetic and put ourselves in the shoes of those distressed? Or do we do it in order to make ourselves feel good? Do we tell stories because we are altruistic and desire cohesion? Or do we do it to rise in rank, status and to feel better for the action?
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