Originally Posted by Austin
To be a good anthropologist, you cannot get involved in your subjects!!!

LOL!

ACh, I'm sorry you're feeling like you have nobody right now. There's nothing more important to people's survival than feeling like you have people to trust and share with.



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Again, articulating my response about how logic and emotions interplay is one of those things that drives me nuts because that's one of those things I do attach a great deal of emotions to.

Last night I read a whole chapter in a book about this. It's called Brain Rules for Baby, by John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist (and a charismatic teacher). He only references studies published in refereed literature and then successfully replicated.

Anyway, happiness, he says, depends on connections with others. Not surprising. He also says, when studying the brain, logic and emotion are so intertwined scientists cannot separate them. The sections I read last night stress how our survival as humans depends a great deal on feeling happy and connected with others. Not surprising.

I just wanted to encourage you to, as someone else already said, approach your goal of connecting with people with the same drive you possess for learning anything else. The science of emotions is esoteric stuff. So you are a biologist - can you decipher this?

Here are some of John Medina's references:

http://brainrules.net/pdf/brain-rules-for-baby-references-happy-baby-seeds.pdf

He gives almost equal billing to Smart and Happy when describing brain development. It looks like science is saying that smart and happy do not have to be mutually exclusive. However, I think there is evidence that higher ability to use logic demands higher emotion regulation to achieve happiness via an interconnected peer group. Maybe you can retool your emotion regulation neurons. Our parents help us develop them in the first place...

I think I'm the only person on this site who hugs... I'm sending you a big fat squeeze right now [[[ACh]]]