Module 2: Assignment 2

I exhibit several different types of masks when I am around different people. I try to be the energetic crazy person when I am with my friends, and I am always ready to try anything that we decide to do that particular night. I talk loudly and sometimes just to add something into the conversation, and more often than not, I will agree with what they have to say because it is easier than being difficult. I love hanging out with my friends, but with a certain group of them, I feel like it’s just a big competition to see who can talk the most about themselves without seeming self-conceited. With my other groups of friends, I feel more comfortable to just be myself and speak what I believe. I use current slang words and the latest clichés when I am around my friends; however, I am careful about some of the things I say to them because gossip spreads like wildfire through peers.
I speak much differently when I am around my professors or other high authorities. I talk to them with the utmost respect, even if I don’t completely respect them. I use my most formal language, and even change my body language. I hold myself more upright and walk more gracefully (or try to) when I’m around my professors than when I am just hanging out with my friends. I try to speak to them like I am very interested in whatever they have to say to me, and I try to ask intelligent questions that they will appreciate.
When I volunteer at childhood events or take my little siblings anywhere with their friends, I try to be the “cool” big college student. Talking to them about subjects that they would not usually talk about amuses me because they are timid at first to talk about issues, and then they get more comfortable. I am very careful about the words I say around them, and the issues I bring up because I know they look up to me, and I don’t want to corrupt them. I also try to speak well to portray myself as a good person who never does anything bad because then that is what they will want to be.
When I am with my parents, I am their perfect little daughter, well sometimes. I strive to be what they and I both know I am capable of. I am also not afraid to speak my mind to them because, most of the time, they will not repeat anything I say. I am not afraid to tell them my accomplishments because they will never be jealous. I do refrain from saying everything I would love to say because my parents look down upon extremely harsh or even moderately harsh language.
So like America in “From American Dream to American Illusion,” I am struggling to portray that “perfect” image that would please everyone while actually hiding my true identities and ideas. I, like America, am starting to feel like I am losing the base fundamentals of myself. Society’s words and opinions are affecting me more and more each year. I am beginning to lose my morals and my ideas for fear that I will stray from that “perfect” image. After rereading through my different “languages,” I would say I am most sincerely myself when I am with my parents. There I am not afraid to feel stupid when I say what’s on my mind. I feel like I can truly express myself, and they will support me and encourage me to do better without feeling jealous of my accomplishments. All the other “languages” I speak have little parts of my true self in them, but not as much as my “language” with my parents. For example, I truly am a person who loves spontaneity and trying new things. I also enjoy speaking well and precisely to some of the most important people in our society. Of course I love being the role model in a person’s life, so I don’t mind speaking like one sometimes. So even though perfection is an impossible feat, I'm trying to attain it through my ideals rather than through my image.

Module 4: Assignment 2

The two metaphors, strange actions = illness and strange actions = possession, highlight and hide many different aspects of a person’s strange behavior and how we conceive and react to each situation. The strange actions = illness metaphor highlights the fact that mentally sick people cannot control they way they act. It states that the strange actions these people do are just “side effects” of their advanced mental disease, which will take a long time and a great amount of drugs and therapy to heal. People react sympathetically to mentally ill patients because they know that their actions are justified by their illness. This metaphor hides how truly outrageous and disturbing some of these patients’ behaviors can be. Sometimes it becomes very difficult to explain some people’s actions by medical science alone.
The strange actions = possession metaphor highlights completely different aspects than the strange actions = illness metaphor. This possession metaphor infers that there is more to a person’s behavior than just mental difficulties. It suggests that a supernatural power is at work. This metaphor also highlights the truly outrageous and sometimes violent behavior these people experience. Even some doctors have trouble explaining these occurrences through their advanced medical terminology. For example, in “A True and Most Dreadful Discourse,” the family members in the room could smell an awful stench, and each of them saw a child illuminated in the bedroom window. Does that mean everyone in the room was mentally ill? Even though I suspect Margaret did have some mental condition, I believe that some supernatural power was at work that night. Scientists believe they can explain everything that happened that night, but a person needs to know how far “a coincidence” can go. When a roomful of people can attest to the same story, can all of them really be mentally ill or “mistaken?” The strange actions = possession metaphor hides the fact that some of the strange behavior might be justified by a mental illness. When many people see a person convulsing for the first time ever, their imagination runs away with them, and they actually believe this person is possessed by the devil. People are more wary of patients who are possessed than patients with a mental illness because the source of their strange behavior is not precisely known. People in general are afraid of what they don’t know, and no one (who’s still living) knows what happens in the afterlife. So through this assessment, strange actions thought to be possession of the devil or a demon are somehow more disturbing than those of an illness. Have people ever thought of that? Why are we more disturbed by individuals who are possessed than people who just have an advanced mental disease? Their actions are very similar, yet people react in different ways depending on which metaphor is derived.
The healing processes of strange actions = illness and strange actions = possession are also very different. In the mental illness cases we have seen over the years, the patient was admitted into an institution and expected to get better after a long time and a lot of drugs and therapy. The people who didn’t understand their loved one’s illness could just drop them off at one of these mental hospitals and visit every once in a while to observe his/her progress. People also expected professional doctors and therapists to treat their relatives or friends. If a person was to take his/her mentally sick relative to a priest for an exorcism today, he/she would be the gossip of the town. In the past when someone was though to be possessed, priests were the main “dictator” in the healing process. If a doctor was brought in, he/she would be expected to recite the chants to drive the devil out just like the rest of them. The victim’s family would summon the help of the entire community to help drive the demon out. So in the past, the patient had a ton of support to help them heal, and today we are finally starting to see that. Doctors and therapists cannot stress enough that family and friend support is as vital to the recovery of a patient as drugs and therapy are. The more and more comfortable society becomes with the idea of mental illness and how sick people can act, the bigger and bigger part it will play in the healing process.
Of course we perceive Eve differently than Margaret because we are living in the 21st century and the exorcisms are a little outdated. As far as treatment goes, I would treat the two just as they were treated. Eve obviously was not possessed by the devil, so she should receive gradual therapy to help her deal with her multiple personalities and in time, heal entirely. Like I stated earlier, I’m not sure if Margaret was actually possessed by the devil, but some higher power was at work. So even though exorcisms are not practical in this day in age, Margaret was treated correctly. She didn’t believe she was mentally ill. She believed that she was possessed, so she knew the only way to recover was to have an exorcism. If she was thrown into a mental institution, she may never have had a full recovery because she herself would not believe that she was healed. With the help of plenty of people and priests through the exorcism, she was able to achieve a quick full recovery. Mentally, she believed she was healed because she knew the “devil” was driven out of her, and that, perhaps, was the best medicine anyone could give her. As far as accountability, neither woman did anything to deserve what she got. People in the 1500-1700s believed that people who were possessed by the devil had sinned gravely so that the devil could come upon them. I don’t believe that those people sinned any more gravely than any other person during that time period.
Ian Hacking would say that the writer of “A True and Most Dreadful Discourse” is mistaken. He would research more into Margaret’s childhood to try to discover links between significant events in her childhood and her most recent “questionable” behavior. So he would agree more, but not entirely, with the diagnosis of Eve White in “The Three Faces of Eve.” Perhaps Eve was just reacting badly to her social circumstances. Maybe she had suppressed her intense dislike for her husband and her housewife role so long that she finally just let that side of her “emerge.” And with the help of her physiatrist, she really started to believe that she had multiple personalities. We may never know exactly.

Bats and all their complexities

Ellen Wetli
Module 5: Assignment 3
Laura Mandell
10-3-06

How has our understanding of bats changed since 1827 when Cuvier first wrote his animal textbook? Do scientists use metaphors / models based on technology to explain animal behavior? If technology changes, does or could that change affect the way we understand animal behavior that we don't understand?

As with most early discoveries in the fascinating world of technology, Cuvier’s theory of the sensory basis of obstacle avoidance by flying bats has evolved with time. In 1827, Georges Cuvier claimed that obstacles were detected by bats by “tactile receptors on the bat’s skin, especially the skin of the wing membranes.” Extensive testing has been done by Donald Griffin and Robert Galambos pertaining to how bats locate objects in flight. All of their research have proven that the “ear was the most important sense organ involved (in determining obstacles).” They even ran a couple tests proving that impairing the skin membrane on a bat’s wing does not affect is ability to locate obstacles in flight (as was assumed by Cuvier). So comparable to the world of technology, the world of science is always changing; theories are being hypothesized, tested, re-hypothesized, re-tested, etc. every day.
Today, we think of bats as creatures of the night that use a series of high-pitched supersonic sounds to determine the location and basic shape of an object. Scientists use several metaphors to better explain the complex process of how bats fly at night. I believe the only way to truly educate the public, who aren’t knowledgeable about the scientific jargon of the technical process, is through metaphors. People are more receptive to information that they can understand. This complex process has been most recently compared to sonar, radar, and echolocation. It has purposive properties of these three processes; however it is not any of these par excellence. It is described metaphorically through radar, and like all metaphors, it both hides and highlights aspects of the bat’s internal process. Saying bats literally have radar is not true because they do not. It hides the fact that some species of bats run into glass. Machines with radar can easily detect a glass object; therefore this aspect of a bat’s recognition of objects is not supported by the radar metaphor. In fact, Cuvier’s metaphor of impressions can actually highlight some aspects of a bat’s object location process which radar cannot. Perhaps, they do have some sensors in their skin which can receive air currents which would make an “impression” on them. This “impression” metaphor is comparable to print on a piece of paper. For example, when a typewriter slaps a letter on a piece of paper, it is leaving small dents or impressions on that piece of paper. Cuvier stated that the air currents undulating from an object leaves special “dents” in the bat’s sensitive membrane and therefore allows them to decipher what is in front of them. Cuvier explained that the reason some species of bats ran into glass was because they don’t have “as sensitive as membrane.” The radar metaphor also highlights many factors of the bat’s complex process. First, scientists describe how radar waves emit from a source, hit and object, and return to the source to inform it of the objects basic shape and size. Then, they state that “instead of..waves, he (the bat) sends out a staccato series of high-pitched cries.” As a person can see, the scientists are stating directly that a bat does not literally have radar, but they are highlighting the similarities, so we can better understand.
Even in general, scientists use metaphors and models based on technology to explain animal behavior. There are of course the well known metaphor of dolphins having “radars” to locate objects in the ocean. The chemical process required by lightening bugs to “light up” is often compared to the chemical process in a filament of a light bulb. Scientists refer to animals in a hot environment as having “internal air-conditioning” when they describe several methods that these animals use to keep cool. Even the “dancing” ritual of bees to communicate where pollen is to the rest of the hive can be metaphorically compared to the popular new technology of Dance Dance Revolution. In theory, the bees are watching a certain dance being done, then copying it to make sure they obtained the message correctly. We are doing the same thing when we copy the heart-racing moves of Dance Dance Revolution.
If technology changes (which of course it will we’re only in the 21st century) animal behavior that is misunderstood right now will be better understood through metaphors. Radar is a perfect example of this concept. It has not been around for very long, and just look at all the ways that scientists have explained complex processes by comparing them to radar. I believe animals are far more complicated than we actually think. Once we develop our technology further and understand concepts through machines, then we can use this information to discover whole new depths in the animal world.