Scientists discover Babies Want to be Happy: The amoral lives of babies.

Scientists discover Babies Want to be Happy: The amoral lives of babies.

Brian Lynch

Revised

“It is interest… which is primary.[Interest] supports both what is necessary for life and what is possible…” Silvan Tomkins. 

Babies want to be happy. I claim this is exactly what we have discovered. But as they say, the devil is in the details.

The truth is being obscured by recent studies dealing with, for example, the “moral lives” of children such as seen in studies by Paul Bloom and others at Yale University. To be sure, to their

credit, they do not make easy or broad claims about their findings. Their findings are full of nuance. The problem is that in the popular press and even in the scientific world we have to get each other’s attention and so we need taglines. Here is the tagline: evidently, “children have a moral life,” that they seem to have a sense of right and wrong, of good and evil. I cringe from the get-go that a modern Yale scientist is throwing around the word evil at this point in his career.

This “moral sense” is based on observing puppet shows where there are “helper” puppets and puppets that hinder the progress of a puppet that is trying to do something. The child, in one case a one-year-old, will choose the helper and not only choose the helper but “whack” the “bad guy.

The first observation is if these findings go towards an innate sense of morality, where do the “bad” guys come from? Shouldn’t all people be good? And so some good babies become bad? I think that is a tough question.

It suggests that we have been doing everything wrong. And why would that be if humans started with such a strong innate moral component? As it is often summarized in the history of man: we have spoken of evil throughout time and some often claimed that we are born “evil.” And again why would that be if we are born with this innate sense of morality? At least in the West, we have been little “devils” in need of socialization. We need to be taught what is “right and wrong” even if we have to be tortured into it. So it seems in so many of our traditions. 

What then? What if we have been spanking the morality out of kids? Why would that be if we are born with a sense of morality? Is that where the bad guys come from? If we are born with a sense of right and wrong weren’t the bad guys born with this same sense? I would claim that is where most of the bad guys come from. That is we “abused them into being bad.” But I am not agreeing exactly that we are born with a sense of morality as these studies suggest but that we are born with an innate need for attachment that leads to what most call good moral character.

I suggest that the researches and science in general are on the right track but just do not have the language to guide them. They get close when Hume is quoted. They state, in the 

New York Times article, “As David Hume argued, mere rationality can’t be the foundation of morality, since our most basic desires are neither rational nor irrational. “Tis not contrary to reason,” he wrote, “to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.” To have a genuinely moral system, in other words, some things first have to matter, and what we see in babies is the development of mattering.”

 I think so much is cleared up and made simpler when we say that the babies “like” or desire to be “happy,” to feel good. What “matters” is to feel good. They are interested in those actions that bring them happiness. They will affiliate with that which will bring happiness. Their facileness at this is explained in their humanness. We learn quickly; at 11 months we are already forming words. Everything they are doing need not have any bearing whatsoever on “morality” but everything to do on what is pleasurable and what they will see as paying off in the future in the form of “happiness” and joy. And they already have some understanding that has something to do with an understanding of long-term cooperation and working with others. I need others' help to be happy, and to complete tasks. Morality falls out of the baby's understanding of what will pay off, of what matters.

It is more than remarkable that when these experiments are done with objects that do not have painted faces there is little or no feedback. In the article I read there was only mention of this but no further comment. Those of us that feel that humans are motivated primarily by emotional forces, or what we call “affect” feel that the human face is the seat of our humanness and is the glue that binds us together. If we want a basis for morality we need not look any further than “right under our noses.” The study of facial expression is showing us that huge amounts of subliminal information are guiding our actions and cognitions every step of the way. How long has it been since we have known that at least fifty percent of face-to-face communication is non-verbal?

Now, this is where a lot of people will take the New York Times article and run with a sexy part in the opening paragraph: “At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the “naughty” one. But this punishment wasn’t enough — he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.”

Of course, note that this is only one child, that is all the other children only choose the “good” guy or rewarded the good guy depending on which study they were in or took the treat away from the “bad” guy. They did not also hit them over the head. Certainly, at this age, the child could have already learned that “hitting” was what one does when one is “bad.” Does the child have siblings and how do they interact and many other questions?

Not only is the answer “right under our noses” via facial expression but so too in the animal kingdom. To look there is to give the lie to our biology which we seem loathed to do. The animal kingdom has its closed system of morality which we often admire. That system is based on the same neuro-anatomy we all start with and that is a “glue” of a mutual recognition of each other that must at some level be called “interest” and in mammals also involves a mutual sharing of joy. These are not necessarily cognitive processes; as cognition only comes in higher primates and as we go along probably many more animals depending on your definition of cognitions, and of course in man. Babies derive pleasure from the pure interest they derive from the world around them and subsequently, the joy derived from that interest. 

“It is interest… which is primary.[Interest] supports both what is necessary for life and what is possible…” Silvan Tomkins. A “morality” quickly “falls” out of being “interested” in others. It has its logic and we need not fall over one another to get there. In the animal kingdom this is certainly the case, mutual “interest” (mutual recognition as being of the same species) in the survival of the species is all that is needed to keep things running smoothly.  

I claim that choosing “the good” guy is nothing more than affiliating with “the good” in the sense of “feeling good,” or wanting to be on the “fun team.” True enough taking the candy away from the “bad” guy is a much more sophisticated maneuver, or is it? What motivates the babies to take the candy away from the “bad” guy is not simply understood.

But are we not back to Hume’s “mattering?” Or I want to posit also that as I said earlier things or “stuff” “falls” out of “what is here.” An order evolves naturally and it evolves naturally from what is given vis-a-vis the “glue” of “interest” in others.

A solitary baby is quite different than one after another baby enters a room. As humans we cannot but note the presence of another human and be “interested” in them. What follows that initial interest is another story.

In short, all babies did not act the same. Not all babies took candy from “bad” babies. Could we say their “interests” varied? The question would be why? We should not jump to the conclusion thinking that they are thinking “morally.”

I suggest that the researchers do these experiments and analyze the real subtext and that is what is going on in the facial expressions of the babies throughout the experiment. Is there a difference between those that do and do not take the candy and what is their expression before this when they see the bunny run away with the ball among many more questions? Possibly this could be done with the footage they have.

No, “morality” is not innate, it seems like it might be as it starts to “fall out” of our bumping into each other as soon as that other kid comes into the room. We want like heck to have fun with them but it quickly gets complicated. The adult giving the baby the option of taking the candy away from the baby reminded me of a scene in the Bergman movie “Shame” where one of the protagonists is forced into a position of “having” to execute someone to save his own life. Or of the Mailgram experiments which are mentioned in the NYT’s article where subjects applied shocks apparently “simply” because they were ordered to. This is the “real” world of adult morality but it is still built on our interests.

The natural basis for morality is our innate need for attachment that is expressed by our automatic innate interest in others. Interest in others brings joy. What begins to make “bad” people is the lack of eye contact between caregiver and child in the first 18 months. If all goes well there we will base our actions, our morality, on what will maximize interest and joy in others and logically this leads to not harming others.

"Nothing is as it seems"

"Nothing is as it seems" 

A note of encouragement to get help.

Brian Lynch

Revised

 "All the world over is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer." Robert Owen.

Most everything has been turned on its head for me over the last fifteen or so years. I like, I am sure most people, thought and think that when people seek help for mental health it is because they are essentially “worse” off than the rest of the population.

One day it occurred to me that maybe quite the opposite was true. Unless you have thought about these issues a great deal or are in therapy or have been in therapy this might not be obvious and in fact, might be quite an offensive thought. I do at times tend to state things in a rather radical mode but that is with the hope of getting the readers' interest. That said I am not saying there are not “well-adjusted folks out there” but it has seemed to me that those that surround the people that come to see me are the ones most in need of help or at minimum at least a few in every family, or let’s say we all need help. We all need to learn about our emotional lives.

The people that take the step to come and get “help” or, I like to say, come in to learn something about their emotions, were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. 

I am not going say they are “better people” only that they are luckier in the sense that they are the ones in front of me for whatever reason. 

The truth of the matter is it will be found out that they are here because those around them literally are or did at some point practically torture them to death or to the point of insanity. That is not to say that those very same people maybe at some point did seek help and or were institutionalized but it is more often that they are in such a state of denial that they could never see themselves as “that kind of person[to seek help.” It would be and is too “shameful” for them to seek help. 

Therefore the person getting help, coming in, and seeking learning has maybe unbeknownst to them at least crossed the threshold of shame tolerance. They are by definition not too shamed to come in. Someone it seems to me has to say these things and they have been said before. They will be hurtful to some but my job is to speak for those that come to see me.

It has occurred to me that it is of maybe no great mystery why over thirty percent of American adults live alone. This usually is interpreted as some sign of gross pathology on our part. 

Just maybe it is a sign of some sanity. A society that has reached a state of affluence that can escape the bonds of insanity that we find behind closed doors. The insanity of constant shame and humiliation that I hear of every day from my privileged vantage point. I am convinced it exists at every level having come at this job not simply as a “therapist” but as a general doctor seeing all levels of lives and families as grist for the “mental health” mill. Living alone is certainly preferable to “Mommy Dearest” who is much more common than we ever thought.

Please pursue your health and peace. No one need to know the counsel you keep. Know that you are the truth seeker if those around you cannot break the cycle.

Disgust

“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” Simon and Garfunkel

Not a popular discussion point, disgust. 

 And much of what I say in this space is probably not very popular although many readers have not figured that out yet. I don’t mean to insult you but I assume that it is not easily grasped that I am always saying, in this blog, that what is happening in the human psyche is that we are motivated by our emotive network first and then we do and think or think and do. 

So it is with things that “disgust” us. The implications of this are far-reaching. We are not motivated primarily by “truth.” Truth is a hard-won luxury. We are motivated by our interests and our interests can be our disgusts that are later justified and made into truths, our truths. Research is showing that what we do is “believe” and then search out those facts that confirm our beliefs and disregard the rest

To set the stage as such: It was now a few years ago that a former mentor of mine Leon Kass stated at a congressional hearing on cloning:

“Repugnance, here as elsewhere, revolts against the excesses of human willfulness, warning us not to transgress what is unspeakably profound. Indeed, in this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done, in which our given human nature no longer commands respect, in which our bodies are regarded as mere instruments of our autonomous rational wills, repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.”              

At the time he took a great deal of heat for this and so he should have. I sometime later countered him in a lengthy work. 

Now if you bear with me for a moment his collogue at the University of Chicago Martha Nussbaum also argues much to the contrary about such strong emotions. In her case, she argues that the use of disgust in the criminal justice system has no place in that system. Law should not be made based on our disgust for something, or some act.

I once tried to engage her in an email dialogue about the biological foundations of emotions but failed due to her busy schedule among, I suppose, many other things. In any event, I see no evidence in her work of a deep understanding of the biology of emotion. That said she is on the right track philosophically, and Kass, unfortunately, at least then, was on the wrong one.

So, disgust, it seems from the Darwinian perspective, is a vestige of our reptilian ancestry, and thank heaven for it, for without it we would not survive. It has more than anything to do with eating and saving us from rotten and toxic food. Slowly it has entered into the emotional system and into the parallel world of emotional cognates. Love is full of metaphors of consuming and devouring the other but woe the day when love ends and we vomit the other out because of disgust!

But back to the general, Kass is wrong: my disgust is not your disgust. Yet we have tried throughout history to make this so. Tribal culture made it easier. Authority makes it easier. And of course, my authority is always more authoritarian than yours. My dad can beat up your dad. We are taught to get an “education” and then to stop thinking when it comes to matters of “disgust.” “Son you don’t even need to go there, don’t even think about it. Trust me. What those people do(eat ice cream, mountain oysters, suck each other’s toes, live in Chicago, swim nude)is just disgusting.” If I am told that the other is “disgusting” I tend to adopt that attitude. The people over the hill are different, they look different; they have different birthing, marriage, and sexual practices. “Isn’t that disgusting?” Those savages scalp people. Isn’t that disgusting? The trouble is who taught them to scalp?

The thought then is that the “rule”, the “law”, and the “sin” is always secondary to someone or some group’s disgust when that law discriminates or excludes someone or something.

Are there “universals?” Are there universal disgusts? I would argue that no there are not but there are acts that given the goal of the emotive system and that is to “maximize joy” that human society will form itself to discourage many acts. 

Those acts are so antithetical to maximizing joy in the common good they will naturally elicit various negative feelings among them but not necessarily restricted to disgust but will also elicit anger, fear, rage, distress, and shame among others. So, yes society does, as we recognize, have its short list of universally prohibited acts such as murder but the attendant emotion we each feel might and is, I say, quite different.

Brian Lynch

Withdraw II

Brian Lynch

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in.” Robert Frost, “The Death of the Hired Man”

This is where the idea that we absorb and read each other’s emotions constantly is such a powerful and useful idea. Things come undone at various times when one member cannot tolerate the affective or emotional overload or when one member loses control of their affective or emotional management.

Things may go along for years until one member of the pair starts to grow in new ways that they find interesting and the other finds threatening. This is a danger when individuals come into therapy.

A partner will start to find new strengths and interests and all kinds of unintended consequences will start to happen at home. Recently a wife encouraged her husband to “step up” and get treatment for his addiction. He did so and this forced such a change in the marital dynamic that she had to start to face her contributions over the years to their problems which became intolerable. She fled, and filed for divorce.

So it has happened in relationships in my life. My growth has led me to places where I cannot but go and so it was one night at dinner,I could not tolerate the inability of my “friend” of then some ten years to acknowledge the worth of my work due to his demonstrated fear of applying any of it to his life. He had, yes, humiliated me just one too many times and I left. So I say there are good reasons to “withdraw.” If people keep hurting you get the hell out of their way. And the definition of insanity is: “doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.”

But there are a billion ways and reasons to withdraw. 

There is no more beautiful tale of withdrawal than “The Death of the Hired Man “ by Robert Frost:

‘Warren leaned out and took a step or two,

Picked up a little stick, and brought it back

And broke it in his hand and tossed it by.

“Silas has better claim on us you think

Then on his brother? Thirteen little miles

     130

As the road winds would bring him to his door.

Silas has walked that far no doubt to-day.

Why didn’t he go there? His brother’s rich,

A somebody—director in the bank.”

“He never told us that.”

“We know it though.”

I venture to say, however, that since I claim that so many of us know so little of our emotional lives that we “withdraw” due to a massive confusion, a hurt that we do not know how to medicate and there is no doctor or cure to look to. We just think “This is what people do.” And these are the many devastating, heartbreaking, and needless breakups that I mention at first. If only we knew a little about what we are feeling at these times.

But, the mind also will tend to do other things even when shut away under the covers, in the house, or on the beach and that is it will blame itself for the mess, or if not it will put all the blame on the other. If all else fails, it will try the Scarlet O’Hare trick and “think about it tomorrow.” 

But, here I am referring to times of withdrawal that are tragic and that are done because we tragically have not learned about this moment of confusion and shame. Not because we are being abused, but because we are emotional invalids and are swept away by the tides of what is how the human psyche works until we understand it and counteract it. I am speaking about being our own worst enemy, leaving because we are embarrassed or ashamed or feel shame.

This study of being ashamed, embarrassed, and shamed has been more than fascinating. I more and more tell people, in no way to be patronizing, but to try and be helpful, that when I first came across these Ideas it took me at least six months to grasp what these authors' particular meanings of shame and embarrassment et al were. And this was with studying almost daily for those six months, so I honestly do not know what to expect from anyone if we just talk a couple times a month. That said, many do seem to “get it.” Now that said (and please no one take this personally) it is more than fascinating how powerful “shame” is in that one can understand it in much of its complexity and seem to be utterly powerless to control shame's control over their own life. But heck I have known that feeling. It takes time. It is called changing scripts. That is what we do when we are confused and feel shame.

"Getting There and Staying There"

Recently several high-profile incidents have given me occasion to reflect on some aspects of what I would say we in modern life continually want to rediscover and that is the wisdom of those philosophies that teach “living in the moment’’ or taking it “a day at a time.” 

These incidents involve famous to near famous people that as such, I say, tempt one to think not of the moment but of a greater arch of life, of that “good life,” a life where great desires are achieved and if only we could be “there.” Yet daily we are taught, as in these cases, how we disavow that lie. We disavow that there is not there, there. That is we simply ignore the true reality that we are all “fellow travelers to the grave.”

So who and what am I talking about? One is the separation of Al and Tipper Gore after forty years of marriage. The second is the death of Ted Koppel’s son, age forty of apparent acute alcohol poisoning after a day of drinking in Manhattan, and finally, the recent saga of author and News Hour essayist Roger Rosenblatt and his wife after the sudden death of their physician daughter.

All of these people would be generally recognized as people that have gone about living their lives and have at least been well-intentioned. Of course, such a statement was more simply said before the advent of the Internet or the plethora of media outlets where we find the most vial opinions hurled about, about just about anyone by anyone for any reason. That said I take the cases mentioned to be people trying to achieve good in the world.

What is my point? Mostly I have already made it; but the details. First, an apology to those mentioned and condolences and some self-monitoring  as I understand that I am now one of “those media outlets.” I do realize that whatever I say is purely conjecture or at best an educated guess and the likelihood is that any analysis will miss the mark. The cases are examples to talk about generalities.

Those generalities are how our desires just might outrun our realities and how modern life and access to how “those” people live and how we imagine they live just might often cause us trouble as if we didn’t have enough already.

So, here we have two couples living out their lives in very different ways for the moment. The Gores having survived the Senate, a family history of the Senate and eight years in the White House and almost ten years out of the White House call it quits. Not only this but a death of a child. And the experts tell us there are two things in their history that are against them being High School sweethearts and the loss of a child. But this said, in the end, are the Gore’s the victim as we all are now longing for that very same “good life,” a life where great desires are achieved and if only we could be ‘there’.”

I come back to an ever-present theme of mine and that is “interest,” an ever-delicate balance. We need “mutual interest.” You would think a marriage of forty years; such a rich one would have such a tapestry of interest that there would be no question of many “mutual rich interests.” The fact is they are separating and if we want we can contemplate why.

In comparison, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife are now living in an “In-law” apartment, a one-bedroom, one-bath affair in their son-in-law's house. They moved from a five-bedroom home in New York to Suburban D.C. When they arrived after the death of their daughter and one of the grandchildren asked “How long are you staying” The answer was “Forever.” He says in interviews, and to paraphrase, “What were we to do sit at home and stare at each other.” I suggest that indeed then they might have separated. Here they have new and vital new mutual interests. In no way do I pit one couple against the other or say one is better than the other. (see the essay “Making Toast”)

Exactly how and why Andrew Koppel died is not so important to me. It seems clear that alcohol had a lot to do with it and a lot of it. I reflect on Ted’s words at his loss, “Our son, Andrew, was a brilliant, caring man, whose loss we will mourn for the rest of our lives." I wonder why “brilliant” was first? Was he speaking to his son? Was he still trying to reassure an insecure son that he did not need to compete with his father? To tell him there was no there, “there?” Maybe it all brings us back to living in the moment?

 Brian Lynch

2010