Gigi Calub I. QUANTIFYING LOVE Harry Harlow, an American behaviorist-scientist, ran a series of experiments to QUANTIFY LOVE. In my cover pic, above, is Harlow and his rhesus monkey-love experiment. I meant the previous status update, below, to actually be a caption for the cover pic but it got complicated (read: lazy) using my tablet. Harlow’s landmark experiments showed that deprivation of love from young rhesus monkeys have a devastating effect. That knowledge crystallized to the current scientific belief that maternal love is important to human-child development. It was a landmark research finding because scientists in the field, at that time, believed that showing affection to your children had no purpose and, in fact, is a dangerous gesture. IA. THE WIRED MOTHER EXPERIMENT One of Harlow’s experiments under “quantification of love,” was THE WIRED MOTHER EXPERIMENT. That experiment was challenging the then-current belief that infant attachment to mothers served only the utilitarian purpose of getting food. The design involved removing the rhesus monkeys from their moms a few hours after birth. Harlow replaced the biological mothers with surrogate mothers made out of wires. Surrogate Mom 1 = mesh wires + food (bottle of milk) Surrogate Mom 2 = mesh wires covered in soft, terry cloth (no food) Harlow found that the rhesus monkeys spent more time with the terry cloth mother. Harlow concluded in 1958, “contact comfort is a variable of overwhelming importance in the development of affectional response, whereas lactation is a variable of negligible importance. (Note: The scientific community disagrees with Harlow now on breast milk being of negligible importance). II. THE METAPHOR I thought of the Harlow Wired Mother Experiment last night because of a conversation with a friend. Friend shared that people in the discourse feel “hurt” because of certain condescension going around. It has been mentioned that there is this certain expectation that certain people, including myself, should mediate and address said condescension and corresponding hurt. The status, below, was my knee-jerk reaction. IIA. THE TERRY CLOTH SURROGATE MOTHER I often joke that I have no maternal bone in me. That is actually not true. But I do compartmentalize. When I am engaged in an extended discussion on legalities of a controversy, for example, as I am in this advocacy, I am focused on forwarding a side of the argument (or both) and not nurturing everyone involved (commenters and spectators alike). My expectation is that everyone would have a similar focus. It turns out, we differ not only in concerns but in expectations. In this discourse, I am more a lactating bare mesh wire than a terry cloth surrogate mother. IIB. MT. EVEREST-GBR As a hobby, I explore nature through summits and oceans. This is why I used the Mt. Everest-GBR metaphor, arguably the wet dream of explorers of the sea and trekkers. The point I was trying to make, in the most cryptic way, is that you can’t expect to enjoy an avenue that doesn’t match your desires. Here, people share the space but hold different purposes. To me, if the subject is the Vhong Navarro cases or DAP, the purpose of comments should be illuminating the issues and coming up with resolutions. But clearly, I am the unrealistic one. People come to social media avenues to socialize. People invest true feelings in the discourse and impose upon the interactions the same expectations as you would “in real life” social settings. For me, that is a tall order. One point brought out by Friend is that my writing falls on deaf ears and they will continue to unless those “hurts” are adequately addressed. And my response is a mere commentary on social media discourse --- you can’t disparage the person providing content on topic because the content is being delivered in a space where you are seeking for something else, a terry cloth surrogate mom. IIC. LOST So I got to thinking… are people mistaken in searching for love and affection here? Or am I the one at the wrong place? This is social media, after all. Am I sharing this space with humans who are not really interested in the political, legal, and social issues unfolding before us under the perfect limelight? Is everyone here to recreate and restore a mother-child bond and I am the only idiot who thinks this is about the Philippines and Filipinos?
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 12:19:36 +0000
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