Thank you for that excellent post, Promicarus. It's also helpful to me personally; I'm thinking that the first groups I felt safer in were not of competitive people (scouts and such), and actually living in cooperative households was my choice in college. I think I still strongly gravitate toward low-key, cooperative people who are generally working for the good of others. Even though these are virtually all Americans (U.S.), the people I feel safest with are ones whose hearts/intentions I can sense more, who feel honest through their eyes.
I think this might be an innate ability we share with our mammal relatives, but many people are not in touch with in themselves; I read that people like Jane Goodall say that great apes are much better at "reading" humans than humans are. For this to be true there have to be signals available that we're giving off. I agree - human predators learn to "read" vulnerabilities. I think I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to read people to stay safe(r). It definitely feels like the ability is more in the feeling part of my mind than the thinking part.
I love reading about animal behavior. I also think that most people are really unaware/unconscious of their responses to dominant people, thus some of the utterly unjust ways that some otherwise "normal" people will defer to abusers and refuse to support abused people.
We never learn in school about these things like eye contact or dominance reactions in people, maybe unless you take some advanced psychology classes. Some people seem to think only non-human animals have dominance-related responses and get offended, and wouldn't believe they do it anyway. So the words to explain some of what happened to abused kids aren't available to them as explanations from society.
Cultural differences are also more ignored in the more competitive parts of the U.S. since you're supposed to conform to the dominant culture there. (In my experience anyway.)
I hope you can find a very positive situation in Latin America, are you looking?
I think this might be an innate ability we share with our mammal relatives, but many people are not in touch with in themselves; I read that people like Jane Goodall say that great apes are much better at "reading" humans than humans are. For this to be true there have to be signals available that we're giving off. I agree - human predators learn to "read" vulnerabilities. I think I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to read people to stay safe(r). It definitely feels like the ability is more in the feeling part of my mind than the thinking part.
I love reading about animal behavior. I also think that most people are really unaware/unconscious of their responses to dominant people, thus some of the utterly unjust ways that some otherwise "normal" people will defer to abusers and refuse to support abused people.
We never learn in school about these things like eye contact or dominance reactions in people, maybe unless you take some advanced psychology classes. Some people seem to think only non-human animals have dominance-related responses and get offended, and wouldn't believe they do it anyway. So the words to explain some of what happened to abused kids aren't available to them as explanations from society.
Cultural differences are also more ignored in the more competitive parts of the U.S. since you're supposed to conform to the dominant culture there. (In my experience anyway.)
I hope you can find a very positive situation in Latin America, are you looking?
