Monday, July 23, 2007

 

HIERARCHY VI

HIERARCHY VI

Immigrants, mental disorder, adaptation, informational environment, patterning, need for speed, evolution, differnces in signals and values,

Just only few days ago I read an article in Malta Independent Online about „boat people“, immigrants from Africa. In this article the author described how hierarchy functions in one group and what happens when “non-natives” come and become a part of this societal group.

Just this morning I came across another article dealing with similar topic, only in a bit different way. It discussed the psychiatric diseases emerging in immigrants, basically regardless the land they live in.

There are problems described of immigrants of different lands of origins coming to different other lands but the problems seem to be similar. These people are more likely to suffer some kind of psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia or depression. This article was published in “Gehirn und Geist”, nr.10, 2006. Many different studies have been carried out on this subject in UK, Holland, Sweden and other countries.

The main problem seems to be the problem of integration of immigrants into the new group, into the society on their new country. This causes then even hallucinations, social isolation and many other symptoms of psychiatric disorders.

After having read the article I realized that nobody mention the problem of hierarchy within a group of humans. The problem of immigrants as I see it is caused by discrepancies between the ability of the organism of immigrants at home, where they are real members of their society, and they feel as such, whereas in the new country they do not feel as a real part of the society. Now comes the question why is it so? And why only some suffer so much and some seem not to suffer?

I believe that the answer lies in the hierarchy and the ability of organism to “read” the signals that are broadcasted by its environment. In this case it means the ability of immigrants to read, perceive and properly decode, and properly react to some new signals that are emitted by the people in the new society. Every society has its values, and they may sometimes differ strongly and sometimes only little. The problem is whether immigrants can adapt to the new signals. It could even be that depression and schizophrenia only appear in individuals with strongly developed system of patterns valid only in one society, where the patterns do not permit for change in these patterns. Such people then necessarily assess all the new signal by their old patterns and the new signal do not fit in there. The process of adaptation, the process of trying to change the patterns might be the reason for depressions and other psychiatric deviations.

There are some other problems to this question. Why only some immigrants suffer these disorders, and why their children who were already born in the foreign country are more likely to suffer these problems as their parents?

I think that a good explanation could be the hierarchy, and the feeling of being accepted. Parents who come from their own country when they were maybe 25 or even older, experienced certain acceptance in their own country, they knew where their place in that society was. They could read all the signals their informational environment emitted and could behave accordingly, they just did fit in.

In the new informational environment some immigrants cannot read the signals and get confused, cannot find their place in the new hierarchy and this discrepancy may be the cause for the health disorders. But some of them can read the signals and have therefore no problems. On the other hand their children have never experienced the feeling of being accepted, they cannot read the signals and have never experienced success. Such immigrant children will suffer attacks of depression or schizophrenia.

Next question: why some of them do not have these problems? Usually immigrants who do not have these problems are these individuals who have in one way or another experienced success. Success shows that the person is accepted by its environment, this in turn regulates the position of the person in the hierarchy of the respective society. When a person experiences success the person knows about being accepted by the other members of the group the person is a member of. In our case immigrants are persons of foreign group.

I believe that this short excurse into the problem of schizophrenia and depressions in immigrants shows how powerful the feeling of hierarchy is, and what different impacts it can have when present and also when absent, even though only partially.

So it seems to me that this kind of depressions and schizophrenia in immigrants is the manifestation of incapability to adapt to new environment, the inability of brain to change the patterns we used to judge our environment. That in turn shows that human groups are evolving and developing not in the same way and in not the same speed. Also different people have differently stable patterns in their brains, some can change them easily, and thus adapt to new environment and some cannot. It seems to me that this again is linked to experienced success. If a person experienced a high success, created corresponding patterns, and that everything over a longer period of time, then such person can have hard problems in changing the patterns. And the manifestation of these difficulties can be depression and other mental disorders.

This is easier observed where superficial differences are great and therefore easy to observe, in groups of immigrant for example. If a person changes its informational environment within a larger group of people, like within one nation, the differences are not so obvious and more likely to be misinterpreted.

Sometimes it is only enough to move from city to a village and one can experience heavy problems. It does not have to be changing countries.

Actually, the fact that we, humans, get involved in the discussion about depressions and mental disorders in immigrants, shows that we usually perceive differences consciously only when they are big enough. We usually are not capable of consciously perceiving small differences. Something else is our subconsciousness. It perceives all the tiny differences and we sometimes display types of behavior we do not understand at all.

Why we have what some scientists call patterning? A pattern is a pre-constructed, pre-finished algorithm of behavior, of response to some informational input. The only plausible answer is the speed. Anytime we need a fast response, a fast reaction, we do not think really, we only use pre-fabricated patterns.

So the need for fast response developed patterns. I would like to discuss these two aspects of human, as well as animal systems of adaptation to environment here as well.


Speed, the fast reaction, is extremely important for all organisms, when responding to some situations. The ability of fast reaction, fast response can be inherited or it can be trained. Where do we need fast reactions? We can detect these in sports, for sure, in former times, in duels, and in even former times when fighting some other males for the right to reproduce. Any organism is occasionally or very often exposed to situations where speedy response is necessary. Humans, for example, need this capacity when driving a car. But we also need it in normal daily business; we need it when speaking with some other persons. Nobody likes to wait for answer for next two years; you will not speak to a person who cannot give you an immediate answer. The talk is becomes unpleasant when interrupted by too many and too long breaks

In order to be able to “produce” such fast reaction our brain has evolved patterns that it uses so that we do not have to really ponder what to answer. If we come across a situation that we have never seen before, our brain does usually two things; first, it tries to find whatever fast response that seems at least a bit plausible, and second, later on, our brain tries to figure out what the really good response should be. Sometimes we refer to such activities as reflecting, reflection, and we usually do that in the evening when alone. This reflecting is nothing else but creating new patterns that can be used later on when similar situation emerges again.

These patterns are necessary for survival, just imagine you would be in the forest, a big tree would be falling down in your direction and you would need two days to ponder about what to do, well, most probably you would not have these two days to your disposal, the tree would hit you and you would die.

Here I would like to stress that these patterns are not only logically produced, they are made also by experience, a non-conscious reaction to some information. A good example would be basketball. In order to hit the basket we never do any complex logical thinking, we only try to hit and constantly correct the force, the angle of the throw.

So the need for speed creates the necessity of patterning, because when organism is equipped with patterns it can react fast and thus survive. In order to develop faster we need logic that pre-fabricates our patterns only in head without necessity to experience something many times and learning from trial and mistake system.

As far as our immigrants are concerned I believe that these patterns can be and are inherited from generation to generation, if it were not so, each new organism would have to “discover” the same patterns and it would be a huge waste of time and resources. Therefore some immigrants cannot easily adapt to the change of a new society, and also therefore their children born already in the new country are still subject to the patterns inherited from their parents.

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