What are your specialities?

[Ldr]

(09-20-2019, 03:44 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Are hormones cause or effect of the times?  

Would hormones tell us why we elected in turn Bill Clinton, Dubya, Obama, and (sort of) Trump as President? Would hormones explain why I disparage disco and praise long, introspective or contrapuntally-masterful pieces of music? 

Quote:Hormones are the reason why people are addicted to social media, games/gambling, sex, food, tobacco, drugs, shopping, fame, power... Without hormones, there would be virtually no addiction. So, since pretty much everyone is more or less addicted to something, now you start to see the power of hormones in daily life.

Link? That is a strong statement. Maybe if people had no trace of addictive behavior they would be without motivation.

You're absolutely correct that without addiction there would be no motivation! It's the two sides of the same coin. Humans crave dopamine, and dopamine is basically at the root of all addictions. People are addicted to different things, but what is common is that they all release dopamine. Addiction is about feeling good, and hormones decide when you feel good and what your mood is. https://www.helpguide.org/harvard/how-ad...-brain.htm This is also why getting rid of addiction is so hard: addiction is rooted in biology, even though it manifests in psychology. The best way to get rid of an addiction is to replace it with some other activity that brings a good feeling, because that takes the power of addiction away when a new way to produce dopamine is found.

I'm linking humans to lemmings since it seems that we make the biggest decisions in our lives from mating to childcare largely dictated by hormone levels. And belonging to a generation only increases this effect, as others in our generation largely behave in the same manner. So hormones work from inside us and also outside, as we get influences from the society and our friends and spouses. But thinking that humans are biologically and mentally something entirely different from other animals is foolish, and Jung understood that foolishness, and he also saw that the foolishness drove humanity into two world wars. Not much has changed since those days, only the lower oxytocin and vasopressin levels have kept things relatively peaceful this far.

So hormones are the cause, not the effect. If you can point me to even one study, where hormones are permanently changed for an individual or a group of people due to societal change/dynamics, please do. But I don't think you're going to find such a study. I think there are huge misconceptions about this matter, as there are studies saying that "soy lowers testosterone" or "chocolate increases dopamine levels". Sure, why not, but for how long? 30 minutes? 2 hours? These headlines are catchy, but they largely mislead the public to believe that hormone base levels are something that can be changed for good. So talking about soyboys etc. is hugely misinformed, although we like to have someone to blame for the societal events that are happening. And you guessed it, I'm going to once again refer to the witch hunts, as when science wasn't around to give us even misleading information, that information was generated from religious texts and folklore, sometimes from thin air.


And yes, hormones largely explain what kind of music we like to listen to. This is a big equation, but preferred music styles do reflect one's personality, and this personality is largely defined by hormones (explaining why in puberty most often changes one's music preferences). Parenting and life events define personality also (a subject which there are thousands of books and studies about, so maybe not a discussion for this time), but most of the recent studies imply that genetics is the thing that ultimately decides the personality. If the personality doesn't fit a family/society, we see rebelling, like what the boomers did. But the millennials fit nicely to the liberal globalistic world, so they didn't have to rebel, although now they don't understand what good nationalism could bring to the table. I hate to talk about recent generations too much, since it seems that it always side-rails a conversation and everyone has an opinion, but lets hope that doesn't happen this time.

Generational hormone levels absolutely have a huge impact on the presidential races. Just look at chapter 4.2.1 in the generational hormone theory's webpage, as it shows how generations have voted. It seems that the birth cohorts from 1965-1975 (lowest oxytocin levels) have almost always voted more to the right than left. And on the other hand, birth cohorts from 1975-> have voted left, splitting a latter part of Gen X (the xennials) to voting very differently than the first half of Gen X. Hormones are obviously not the only deciding factor when voting, but it seems that the average voting behavior follows generational oxytocin levels like chapter 4 presents.