READ/FIND - ELLIOT WHITE - THE BALKANIZED GLOBAL VILLAGE: A PSYCHOGENETIC PERSPECTIVE, IN RESEARCH IN BIOPOLITICS V. 5

RESEARCH IN BIOPOLITICS 2 - J.C. DAVIES - INNATE ROOTS OF REVOLUTION

P. 192 - it is a psychological truism that perception is functionally selective: that people see things which are relevant to what they want. it is perhaps equally as true that people remember things that are relevant to basic desirves, without themselves being aware of the link between memory and desire. one of these desires is to maintain a good image of oneself in one's own mind: that is, to maintain one's dignity. this requires the suppression and repression of a wide variety of stimuli that do not fit one's preconceptions of self

p 194 - biological research on power has perhaps most often dealt with interaction in which one part to an interaction is more powerful than the other: power in the observed interaction is assymetrical. organic correlates of this asymmetry appear in two major kinds of hormones: steroids (mainly testosterone, estrogen, and cortisol) and catecholamines, including dopamine, norepinephrine (noradrenalin), and epinephrine (adrenalie)

males tend to be more seertive than females and to have higher testosterone levels. relatively high catecholamine levels tend to be associated with stress and threat: if an organism is threatened, its norepinephrine and epinephrine levels tend to rise and to produce aggresive or defensive action against the threat. after the threat is passed, catecholamine levels tend to fall. individuals in whom steroid and catecholamine levels are chronically higher tend to be dominant

195 - the thesis that dignity and power are innately rooted drives....environmental factors have hormonal consequences: the establishment of hierarchy changes thelevelsof this hormone


196 - research in changes in behavior...do suggest that an innate inferiority in strength, assertiveness, and aggresiveness, and also lower hormone levels are associated with these attributes. that is, the defeated animals did not welcome defeat but accepted it because they could do no better. their subordination appears to be a secondary product, a derivation not of an innate desire to be subordinate but of innate inability to be dominant.

197 - cortisol (hydrocortisone_ levels tend to be higher in subordinate than in dominant male vervet monkeys (mcguire, 1982). and the level of seratonin...tends to be higher among dominant individuals (both vervet monekys and humans) than among subordinates. when an individual loses dominance, his serotonin level goes down (McGuire, 1982; Madsen, 1985). once an animal has established or at least accepted its power position, threats are likely to dominish, from both the winner and the loser in the struggle for food or sex or whatever is the object of conflict

we prime primates are born with brains that have the enormous potential to process information and make decisions. we are blessed and cursed with an extraordinary desire to understand - and necessarily to form complex (198)abstractions in the process

201 - however, once survival has become relatively assured and face-to-face groups have been re-formed out of the chaotic struggle of each against all, violence does not necessarily cease: it may even intensify, because with the establishment of physical security and of group solidarity, people are nw free to pursue together and politically the satisfaction of their individually felt and now socially supported metasurvival needs, including the needs for dignity and power. interindividual violence may be replaced by intergroup and international violence

202 - physical deprivation was among the causes of these uprisings, but black people in america were surviving better when they did rebel in 1965 than in they were in 1965, when they don't. the most active Arab rebels in the 1988 intefadeh were better off than their parents

what is noteworthy about these recent and current uprisings is that they have been instigated by people who rebelled not just in order to eat but also in order to gain increased dignity and a larger share of power than they had experienced previously. it is not that they had hitherto enjoyed substantial amounts of deference and power but that they had hitherto been so intently, so totally preoccupied with staying alive and well, that they could not concern themselves with anything else