"Little Gray Cells"

Tabatha, the love of my life, has puppy-sitting duties today. She loves kids and dogs, so I guess that's an ideal combination. She has already given a name to one of the puppies she would like to adopt (and I'm behind her on this one, I love dogs myself). She named the little fellow Hercules, though I can't help but call him Hercule, after my mother's favorite literary detective. For those who don't get the reference, it's Hercule Poirot, one of Agatha Christie's more memorable characters. M. Poirot is a mustachioed, dapper gentleman of Belgian extraction, and a great advocate of exercising the "little gray cells", which he credits with solving a number of crimes. Hercule/s the puppy, to the best of my knowledge, does not solve crimes, yet displays a decided dislike of being on his back, and a decided preference both for growing and eating. After all, he is a baby, and my experience has been this is a preference for babies both human and canine.

Speaking of which, I have had the privelege to meet several babies during my time at Fort Sill, as well as Kate the dog. Kate is cared for by one of the First Sergeants of our brigade, and is friendly as the day is long. I would have liked to meet her under different circumstances, as I was pulling extra duty at the time. She appears to be partly or mostly German Shepherd, and like most dogs identifies a friend by smell. I wonder what an enemy smells like to a dog? How strange that dogs relate to the world through smell, while us humans rely partially on smell, primarily on visual. Especially males, or so I'm told. However, smell is one of the first senses to develop, and human babies can identify dear Mom through smell rather than sight. There is a process of the brain called taste aversion, in which those things that make us sick, or we associate with being ill will become distasteful to us. Going back to mothers, my own mom does not like Jordan almonds for this reason- the first time she tried them she was sick, so in her excellent brain the taste of them became associated with being ill. Obviously this serves some evolutionary functions, as an ability to identify those things that make us sick is a contributing factor towards survival.

Speaking of the little gray cells, there is an interesting parallel here in A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. An interesting book, to be sure. It is partially written in the slang language of Nadsat, which is apparently a derivative of some Russian-area language or another. At any rate, it deals with what is commonly known in psychological circles as classical conditioning. The basic idea is the same as the Jordan almonds- a neutral stimulus, say, a sound, a visual image, or similar is paired with a negative or positive stimulus- for animals, getting food, a treat, or something similar. The result is, as time goes on, that the conditioned stimulus (that is, the neutral stimulus) creates the same response in the person or animal as does the conditioned stimulus paired with the positive or negative stimulus.
This is how dogs and other animals are trained. It becomes automatic to respond in the same way to the conditioned stimulus when it has been paired so often with the unconditioned (positive or negative) stimulus. Of course, in the case of us humans, there's another factor involved. That is our own mental response to the stimulus, and our own thoughts. In the case of higher animals such as man, this can act as a positive reinforcement for behaviors.
All in all, what role does doing good play in all this? Is it nothing more than our own brains releasing positive chemicals? Well, yes and no. This oh-so-clinical model rules out an element that I very much believe to exist- the human spirit. I believe this spirit is responsible for both man's highest, loftiest goals and his deepest depravations. This human spirit can be corrupted, or be made responsible for our highest, most compassionate aspirations. Does this reinforce behavior? Only on the most base and chemical level. Above that, I believe it to be the fact of one spirit communing with another- it does no one good to see another person degraded, that crawling which should run. Though lacking in any real proof, I feel it intuitively. At any rate, that's about all the news for now. Hope you like the new format, and I'll keep you posted, dear readers!