Mary Tomkins's Archive

When I was in seventh grade speech class I decided what I wanted to do with my life. We were learning about persuasive speeches or something and our teacher introduced Maslow’s theory as a way to help write persuasive speeches by figuring out at which stage your audience probably was. When I learned about his theories, I fell in love with the field of psychology. Then, when I was a freshmen, I revisited Maslow’s theory for a paper. It’s from that paper that I want to draw my thoughts for this post. It seems kind of unrelated to the class, but it’s something that I have wondered about. Granted, when I wrote the paper I was an uneducated freshman who just needed a paper topic and tried to make a somewhat scholarly-sounding paper to just make it by in the class.
The paper was about the intersection of literature and psychology: why people read fiction. I posited that perhaps one of the biggest reasons we read fiction (for those of us who do actually read fiction) is because we can live vicariously through the characters and fulfill the different stages of our needs through the characters of the book. In my paper I said that perhaps this did not apply to the first two levels, since those needs are necessary for survival. Before you read a book you make sure you can eat that day, etc. However, it might apply to the higher level needs. That’s why romance novels are so popular. Perhaps when it is too much effort to fulfill our own needs we turn to a book to fulfill the needs for us.
I don’t know. When it comes down to it, the idea seems somewhat ridiculous. After all, some people read certain novels even after their needs are filled. For example, people in committed relationships still read the Twilight books, so they’re not using those books to fulfill their desire for love. It was just something I was thinking about.

Structuralism really makes a lot of sense to me, and I want to explain why. All my life, I’ve been very analytical and fancied myself rather scientific. And yet, for some reason I have always been fascinated by the soft science of psychology. This means that I find myself leaning more on the scientific side of psychology. My brother, who is one of the people by whom I am the most influenced, is a science major. He is majoring in math and computer science (and for a while physics). This is important only in that it explains part of why I find science so important. Things have to add up. It always seemed to me that science was the way things should be. It just makes sense. I’m not such a fan of the ‘mushy’ part of psychology, that which cannot be quantified. I remember a time, as a young freshman psychology student, when I tried making it all about the parts of the brain, the biology of it, not taking into account anything that could not be proven by hard science. I really wanted psychology to be able to hold it’s head up and not be scorned by those hard sciences, those that have all kinds of empirical evidence. This is why I could really get behind structuralism and the idea of breaking things down into their elemental parts. However, as I have grown older and, I hope, wiser I have come to realize how foolish it is to try to break down the human experience into little, scientific parts. I understand that it is somewhat helpful, but I also understand that there are some things that need a more Gestaltist approach, looking at the whole.
Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about while we discussed the ideas held by the structuralists.

Watching the video with Dr. Taylor really intrigued me. The way she described it as a scientist was really cool. But at the same time it kind of made me nervous. Like the stuff we talked about on Wednesday (I think it was Wednesday). Sometimes when people ask me why I believe that God exists I respond with the stories of when I have felt him unmistakably. And yet, now that I know there is a part of my brain that produces that feeling I am left with the necessity of a faith based on more than just a feeling, however strong. When I realized that what I considered was proof of God’s existence was really just firings of neurons, the stilts that had held up my faith were swept away. In that moment I discovered what my faith was really made of. Apparently during the last few years a foundation has been being built under these stilts, and what I really believe about why I believe in God was made clear to me. Last fall I took a class called the Gospel of John, and through that class and some other experiences, I have been learning that true faith in God is more than just proofs that we are shown, but instead a choice. People are going to try to convince me of a million different things, and many of them are going to have equally convincing proofs on either side of an issue. At some point I just have to decide what I’m going to believe. Granted, I will only make choices within reason. God has given us intelligence to be able to discern between the ridiculous choices and the plausible ones, it would be irresponsible to just throw up my hands and leave it up to choice. But after looking at all the evidence, it will come to the point when I need to may a choice. And before I even knew that religious experiences were firings of neurons, I had already made my choice to believe in God. On that foundation is my entire life based. And as an added note, it occurred to me that having a “God module” part of the brain does not negate the feelings that it produces. The God I believe in makes sense, and even religious experiences can have scientific backing and still be legitimate.

On Monday, when we were talking about Kant and his take on the idea of Tabula Rasa, or blank slate, I was reminded of one of my favorite shows from last year: Dollhouse. This clip describes the basic idea of the show, but if you don’t want to watch it I can sum it up for you.

Basically it’s about an organization that rents out people. These people’s personalities are wiped when they come in and they are programed with different personalities for the different jobs. It’s a really interesting take on the idea of tabula rasa, because at first it seems as though everyone is indeed a blank slate. However, as the show progresses you begin to see the ‘dolls’ or ‘actives’ develop personalities or have basic personality traits. One of them is basically psychotic, as was his personality before he volunteered to be in the dollhouse. It’s really interesting from a psychological standpoint to see what the creators include in the basic personality traits and what is the extras they get from being programed. One of the things that is included in the blank slate for a lot of the dolls (excepting the psychotic one) is morality, which is one of Kant’s ideas. The show is really interesting and poses many psychological questions, not to mention ethical ones. I would definitely suggest it to anyone who is okay with lots of crazy ideas.

In my mind Descartes is one of the greatest thinkers of all time. When I was first shown his ideas and his way of determining certainty it revolutionized my life. The idea that you can determine certainty through yourself was beyond my comprehension. But I never realized how profound the rest of his ideas were before. The other day in class when we discussed in more depth his thoughts I was amazed. It never occurred to me that his philosophy could be applied to psychology. But the more I thought about it the more it made sense and fit into what all my professors and mentors have been saying since I got to college: we need to discover the truth on our own. People can show us the way, but we really need to discover it on our own. This is probably old news to everyone else, but it really struck me. No one else can force you to understand “Cogito ergo sum”, it’s all up to you to decide to figure it out. We all talked about truth a lot with the last unit and Plato, but this also is a big part of it. It doesn’t matter who tries to enlighten us or take us out of the cave, whatever the cave may be, but until we decide we’re willing to leave the cave and find the Truth, it’s all for nothing. This gives us more independence. I’m going out to try to find truth, no one can bring it to me.

I’m going to post on the most popular discussions on the blog for this unit: Plato and his allegory of the Cave. This allegory resonates deeply with me because of what I believe in. Even though I agree with living in the world we have and acting the way we act, I feel that Christianity is based on the idea of Truth beyond the physical world. I love C.S. Lewis, and even though I brought him up in class I want to quote him again. In The Last Battle, after the destruction Narnia as they knew it, the main characters are standing around talking about the new place they are seeing. One of them, a professor, brings in Plato almost exactly, saying that the Narnia they had come from “ was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world.” Later the narrator says “the new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more.” This idea can be seen in the Great Divorce as well. The narrator talks about getting to Heaven and realizing that the people he came with are transparent and less real than the world there. And to him the whole world is more real and solid than anything he’s ever seen before. But it’s not just Lewis. This idea can be seen in Paul’s writings, too. He talks about putting on the armor of God because of fighting “the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6.12). The heavenly realms are not part of this physical world in which we live, they are something deeper than that. Lastly Paul says in Romans that people “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised” (Romans 1.15). It seems to me that Christianity is founded on the idea of Truth beyond the obvious. The question becomes, how do we find a balance between looking for the Truth and living in the world we have?