Psycho-Sociobiology 101: Is that all there is?

Here’s what it boils down to:

1. Each of us has a unique experience of life because each of us has a singular genetic structure, including our brain and other organs and, to some degree, because of our particular life circumstances.
2. We share some similarities with one another, most noticeably within families, but on a broader scale as well, within discernible ethnic and racial groups. These similarities can include physical, perceptual, emotional and behavioral traits.
3. There are other broad groupings of similarities and differences in these traits, among them:
1. Gender
2. Culture
3. Social group assimilation, i.e., group vs. individual
4. Sexual preferences
5. Age
6. Societal interests, concerns and goals, e.g., liberal or conservative, etc.
4. Our physical traits, including our brains and the way each unique brain perceives, processes, stores and dispatches, cause our behaviors, including emotions to which we respond.
5. To the degree that our brain (and body) is similar to or different from others will largely define similarities or differences in behavior among individuals and groups.
6. Changing these differences and similarities is as simple as changing your brain structure.
7. Think about it.

Psychobiology 101: It is what it is.

When I was a kid, I used to wonder if everyone saw colors the same way. Was the color blue seen the same by everyone? How would we know if it wasn’t?

Much later, I had a sweater. It was woven from multi-color yarn and it was loose and comfortable; it became my favorite. Typical of favorite garments, after a few years it began to show its age.

One evening we were getting ready to go out to some friends’ house for dinner and my wife asked me what I was going to wear. I told her I planned to wear my favorite blue sweater.

She asked, “What blue sweater?”

I said, “You know, the blue pullover, the crew neck that I like.”

She said, “You mean that green one?”

I said, “No, the blue one.”

“What blue one? Show me.”

I pulled the sweater on and said, “Ta-Da!”

She said, “That’s a green sweater and you’re not wearing that ratty old thing out of the house.”

I was immediately interested in our differing descriptions of the sweater—the color, that is; it was definitely ratty.

I went into the bathroom and looked at the sweater in the mirror. Multi-color it was, but it seemed predominantly blue to me.

I wanted to get to the bottom of this blue-green controversy so, to further my research, I went to our teenage daughter’s room. I asked her, if she had to use just one color to describe the sweater, what would it be.

She pondered a few seconds and said, “I suppose brown, or maybe rust. You’re not going to wear that tonight, are you?”

The only thing I was sure of was that I was not going to wear that sweater to go out that evening.

Some years later, though, I became certain of this: to a greater or lesser degree, we all experience existence—life—each in our own unique way.