Neural pathways differ between gregarious living and the home alones

[evildrneil]

Chicken or egg? Do people with the neural pathways for self sufficiency seek out lone living and those for gregarious living seek out joint living?

[Rowan22]

Chicken or egg? Do people with the neural pathways for self sufficiency seek out lone living and those for gregarious living seek out joint living?

 

I believe the idea is that we all start a "blank slate" so to speak, and socialisation either enhances what we are born with, or not. We then because of poor social skills etc retreat into isolation, or become the social butterfly dependent on this interaction between biology and environment.

[Swan_Vesta]

Paper bags! Paper bags! We used te lay awake at neet sobbin bart the paradis of paper bag livin!

 

You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.

[Rowan22]

You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.

 

 

Six pence a week six pence a week, decadent luxury that was! We ad te live int mill dreaming of a septic tank soaked piece of bread! You wa part time! We got up before we went to bed, and our dad couldn’t affort t belt.

 

So he’d make us beat oursens we a copy tat Holy bible till we were unconscious! Then he’d beat us for not paying enough attention. Bye it were ard life, but you could leave yer kitchen door open and nobody ad tek owt. Usually cos they were too weak from working a twenty five hour day.

[evildrneil]

I believe the idea is that we all start a "blank slate" so to speak, and socialisation either enhances what we are born with, or not. We then because of poor social skills etc retreat into isolation, or become the social butterfly dependent on this interaction between biology and environment.

 

But by the time your looking at either living on your own or in a group you are well beyond the tabula rasa stage - if such a stage ever truly exists.

[Rowan22]

But by the time your looking at either living on your own or in a group you are well beyond the tabula rasa stage - if such a stage ever truly exists.

 

True, but that's the point isn't it? That we come into the world without experience of it, And then experience alters our "make up" in negative and positive ways. Reinforcing the healthy social and gregarious or negating it.

[evildrneil]

True, but that's the point isn't it? That we come into the world without experience of it, And then experience alters our "make up" in negative and positive ways. Reinforcing the healthy social and gregarious or negating it.

 

There you get into the whole nature/nurture debate - are we born social/loners or are we made.

[Jessica23]

So what happens to people who move from a socially rich environment to being on their own? Do their neural pathways shrivel up and die?

 

Exactly. Seems tenuous at best to me, unless the neural pathways are very flexible.

 

I've lived with c. 50 other people, with five other people, with three other people, one other person and alone at various stages in my life - what on earth must mine look like?

[metaphoria]

Surely nobody likes being on their own for a prolonged period of time. There’s a fine line between an adapting neural pathway of enjoying your own space, and painting a face on a volleyball called ‘Wilson’.

[Jessica23]

Surely nobody likes being on their own for a prolonged period of time. [...]

 

Some people do!