Stromberg, Peter. "Elvis Alive?: The Ideology of American Consumerism." In Journal of Popular Cultures, vol 24 no 3, Winter 1990, pp11-20.

Such a good article.

Another article that deals with the nature of formal relationships and poop;

Graeber, David. "Manners, deference, and Private Property in Early Modern Europe." Comparative Studies in society and history. 1997 v39 4:694-728. (The beging part is the one that deals with social relationships)--this explains why you will tell close friends about eating and pooping, but in formal situations you steer clear of activities that make the human body discontinuous with the external environment.


Bryan, you say that joy is something more than chemical, and I can agree with that (because as a Naturalist I feel that the whole has characters different than the parts), but if you've ever "caused" joy with substances (cannabis, psilocybin,) you realize that different parts of that emotion (joy) can be created through of all things poison. Joy feels really good on a subjective level, and very intense emotions may fool one into believing that life is something special--and in many ways it is--but there need be no extra agent for its inspiration. There is some pleasure that has to do with the quenching of appetites, and there is other pleasure that has to do with the suppression of desire. While a plethora of names can be used, I challenge you to give me an experience that falls outside of these to poles; both of which can be traced back to rational organ processes, which in turn can be traced to the last 3 1/2 billion years of animal development on this world.

Love may seem special, and unique for a person in that it can be displaced onto a work of art or institution, but realize that this displacement is a result of our species' extraordinary ability to abstractify ideas, while the pathways themselves developed as a method to keep a pair bond oriented around each other and their common offspring for roughly 7 years so the baby could be left with the mother (to forage in the salt marsh). ha.

I love birds and neoclassical painting, but this is because I'm built to love a woman and our children, I simply am in a limnal period where these pathways are used but on objects other than their targets.

What emotion, do you feel, is biologically inexplicable?

posted by Adrian   [5:52 AM]

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