Is the basis for morality in society touching?

[fromderinside]

I usually like David Brooks. He often makes good points. But did he this time when he argued societies need to treat touch as a moral issue.Now Is the Time to Talk About the Power of Touch https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

But there is something unique about positive or negative touch. Emotional touch alters the heart and soul in ways that are mostly unconscious. It can take a lifetime of analysis to get even a glimpse of understanding.

For this reason, cultures all around the world have treated emotional touching as something apart. The Greeks labeled the drive to touch with the word “eros,” and they meant something vaster and deeper than just sexual pleasure. “Animals have sex and human beings have eros, and no accurate science is possible without making this distinction,” Allan Bloom observed.

The Abrahamic religions also treat sex as something sacred and beautiful when enveloped in loving and covenantal protections, and as something disordered and potentially peace-destroying when not.

This time IMHO he confuses touch with morality. Humans need touch. Humans prosper in environments where non aggressive touching is the norm. But to suggest it is something sacred, if I'm reading him correctly, goes way over the line.

So is touch critical to the good life? Or is it just a crutch for those who want the world to follow a particular order to wrap all kinds of emotional content around in a more or less religious harangue.

Am I going too far? I'm opposed to physicality based moral arguments as well since they all tend to wind up arguing for a tiny leader us and a huge regulated or worse other.

 

[fromderinside]

Some science related to the politics and morality statements made above.

The science a summary:How Important Is Physical Contact with Your Infant? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/infant-touch/

These trends point to the lasting effects of early infancy environments and the changes that the brain undergoes during that period. Below the surface, some children from deprived surroundings such as orphanages, have vastly different hormone levels than their parent-raised peers even beyond the baby years. For instance, in Romania in the 1980s, by ages six to 12, levels of the stress hormone cortisol were still much higher in children who had lived in orphanages for more than eight months than in those who were adopted at or before the age of four months, according to a study from Development and Psychopathology. Other work has shown that children who experienced early deprivation also had different levels of oxytocin and vasopressin (hormones that have been linked to emotion and social bonding), despite having had an average of three years in a family home. "This environmental change [into a home] does not seem to have completely overridden all of the effects of early neglect," the researchers, led by Alison Wismer Fries of the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison noted in their study, published in 2005 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Early experience in humans is associated with changes in neuropeptides critical for regulating social behavior http://www.pnas.org/content/102/47/17237.full


Touch in infancy is important for healthy brain development http://theconversation.com/touch-in-infancy-is-important-for-healthy-brain-development-74864

[FONT=&quot]The researchers also showed, for the first time, that for premature babies the quality of touch while in hospital after birth (typically around one month) affected the functioning of the babies’ brains. When they tested the premature babies, just before they were discharged from hospital, they found that the more they experienced pleasant, nurturing touch (such as breastfeeding or skin contact) the greater the brain response to touch. Conversely, unpleasant touch, such as skin punctures and tube insertions, were associated with reduced brain activity.[/FONT]

Above signals importance of comes good touch versus bad touch

 

[rousseau]

So is touch critical to the good life

I'd add being touched is critical to the good life, but your thread raises a good point in that treating others well should be critical to spreading well-being

At the same time, there's a catch-22 there because many people are takers. You give a little, and then they just take more.

 

[fromderinside]

So is touch critical to the good life

I'd add being touched is critical to the good life, but your thread raises a good point in that treating others well should be critical to spreading well-being

At the same time, there's a catch-22 there because many people are takers. You give a little, and then they just take more.

I accept all these things. Even taking all these thing as true should one then make a morality based on self loving, touch, and community, or ,a religious structure that rewards and punishes based on something we and other beings have evolved to possess as we became social beings as Brooks intimates?

Should a purely fitness bound system of of social rewarding and punishing be carved in stone.

 

[rousseau]

So is touch critical to the good life

I'd add being touched is critical to the good life, but your thread raises a good point in that treating others well should be critical to spreading well-being

At the same time, there's a catch-22 there because many people are takers. You give a little, and then they just take more.

I accept all these things. Even taking all these thing as true should one then make a morality based on self loving, touch, and community, or ,a religious structure that rewards and punishes based on something we and other beings have evolved to possess as we became social beings as Brooks intimates?

Should a purely fitness bound system of of social rewarding and punishing be carved in stone.

I'd think a proper sense of morality is a result of an actualised society and the logical conclusion of real understanding. Also something that evolves (we figure out over time).

So not so much 'should we', but rather 'how do we maximise people's moral sense'. I'd argue only a prosperous, organised, educated, and fair community can achieve this. Once those things switch to true, then people mostly figure out how to treat each other properly.. yanno, unless they just don't get it, which is a real constraint.

 

[fromderinside]

Really. You're becoming an evolved Greek.

 

[rousseau]

Really. You're becoming an evolved Greek.

Maybe I should write a modern Organon.

Logic takes one far..

I do agree, though, our collective sense of morality in most places is under-developed.

 

[fromderinside]

I think that if we give those who have studied morality and religion from a philosophical perspective hints about the importance of squirts and senses in social behavior they would run with that to match such with existing social theory. That should encourage those with scientific to couple it with our emerging knowledge about how cognitive aspects of social behavior also influence and are influenced by social evolutionary factors.

 

[untermensche]

Morality is based on emotion in a conscious animal with the ability to understand the likely consequence of action. Based on empathy combined with intelligence.

There is nothing else to base caring about some animal you have never met on.

No squirt will make you care. The squirts will actually make you want to kill a strange animal.

 

[rousseau]

I think that if we give those who have studied morality and religion from a philosophical perspective hints about the importance of squirts and senses in social behavior they would run with that to match such with existing social theory. That should encourage those with scientific to couple it with our emerging knowledge about how cognitive aspects of social behavior also influence and are influenced by social evolutionary factors.

I get you.

The evidence seems to be there that our justice systems (as well as how we understand each other) could use refinement in a lot of respects. I mean, if you're a criminal in the U.S. I dunno that 5 years of hard time, destitution, and isolation serves any purpose besides revenge and safety of the public. Punishment that doesn't take into account the huge multitude of factors that lead to bad behavior, and says 'too bad, you lost'. Might be more room for nurture there.

Getting more personal as I witness parents around me deal with their children, I notice a big gap in their understanding of how people's minds work. Genuinely care, show respect, but be firm and draw the line where it needs to be drawn. Adults don't get it, they're still kids too, just people who get to wear hard-hats and collared shirts.

And yea, it's only been a century or two since we were blindly executing people, so the science and politics need some time to catch up. My above posts only mention that 'whatever the answer is, we'll figure it out when we can'.. but yea I think your OP is a reasonable part of the equation.

 

[fromderinside]

...except we are physical, er, physiological beings who, if given a shot of adrenaline, become excited and feel something. Almost never do we feel something then get a jolt of adrenaline, or whatever .... Canon Bard to you sir. strange that wanting to kill statement. We have an extensive evolution of systems that regulate squirts in our systems which do a lot more than enrage. Understanding came a lot later than that development to which you subscribe. One can actually measure that in reaction time.

 

[Jon Osterman]

I would dispute that touch is essential for our welbeing. The findings with babies could be due to any number of things (for example, babies you were not touched were denied sensory input generally and therefore lack stimulus to develop). I certainly don't need to be touched and don't like to be touched.

I tought this thread was going to declare touching as immoral without explicit consent, which I would absolutly agree with. I am disappointed.

 

[untermensche]

Touching seems to be necessary for good emotional development up to a certain point.

Humans get a lot of touching with dogs and cats.

It may be a major reason many people have them.

I doubt the brain knows the difference.

 

[bilby]

I would dispute that touch is essential for our welbeing. The findings with babies could be due to any number of things (for example, babies you were not touched were denied sensory input generally and therefore lack stimulus to develop). I certainly don't need to be touched and don't like to be touched.

I tought this thread was going to declare touching as immoral without explicit consent, which I would absolutly agree with. I am disappointed.

I agree.

Anyone who touches me without invitation is at serious risk of me reciprocating by touching their nose with my knuckles.

 

[fromderinside]

Ergo the touchy clan of knuckleheads...

No fear. You do beer.

OK. Comedy segment noted. Touching de Nile makes or means no sense.

Most of us animals need be sensitive to touch for all number of reasons. Moving and staying in place requires contact with air, water or/and earth. Motion requires movement a medium he says again. One wonders why anyone would suggest touch isn't crucial to physical and social development.