Random Science Findings

Mindy Weisberger presents interesting information about cats. I have a

grand cat and a grand dog. I enjoy most animals. Her composition appears
in Live Science. I provide a biopsychosocial paradigm.

“Cats create "mental maps" using audio cues, scientists are discovering”.
Just like young children, around 8 months, this feat represents object
constancy and theory of mind. They are not oblivious to our presence and
absence.

Cats keep track of us. Scientists are learning that “domestic cats create
"mental maps" that tell them where nearby humans are located, based on
where sounds are coming from. “Researchers test cats by playing
recordings of human voices calling the cats' names; they then played those
recordings again, only this time through a speaker in a different place, so
that the same sounds came from farther away”. These cats display
curiosity and alertness and a reorientation.

Prior research demonstrates object permanence in primates such as

chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas. And in fact, so do jays, bears
(including Teddy Bears) and dogs (like our grand dog, Toby). I’m unsure
about pet fish?

Previous research documents that cats differentiate sounds of owners from

strangers. They also exhibit “teleportation" which is also referred to as
socio-spatial cognition”.

The second article appears in Neuroscience and is composed by Professor

Robert Atkinson. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern
Maine and Nautilus Book Award-winning author of “The Story of Our Time:
From Duality to Interconnectedness to Oneness”.
Culture emerges over time and gradually. It evidences periods of progress,
homeostasis and regression. Professor Atkinson offers that “culture has
gone through three major phases of growth. First, Indigenous peoples
revered the land, lived life in harmony with nature, and saw the entire
creation as sacred. Their inherent consciousness of oneness was
maintained through rituals and ceremonies that celebrated this wholeness”.

Later, we experience mass migration following a search for valued assets.

We then create communities out of bands and reveal greater complexity.
We become more aware of the advantages of collective integrity and
survival of various threats.

Communities differentiate from others and engender “practices of

segregation, prejudice, oppression, racism, conquest, genocide, and war”.

As a former AF ER medic I serve four years during the Vietnam Conflict.

Now so many of US in America are confronting a devolving Second Civil
War. To me it is an expression of profound insanity. Our challenge now is
to create a global collective effort to our survival.

“Darwin shows that social evolution is directed toward a familiar and long-
desired outcome, extending not only the natural law of cooperation but also
the Golden Rule from the individual level to the global level”. And this is
quite a noble shift. And not everyone is on board!

“Carl Jung adds to our understanding of cultural evolution with his concept
of the collective unconscious”. This, he said, contains the whole spiritual
heritage of humanity’s evolution born anew in the mind of every individual
in the form of human universals, or archetypes, which move upward from
an inner core of unconscious energy, through human ancestors to ethnic
groups to national groups, and finally to the individual human psyche at a
conscious level”. What?? “This thread of the evolution of consciousness
goes back to psychology’s origin, affirms that evolution on the collective
level is purposeful, directional, and progressive, and gives us hope for the
future”.
Based on our current challenges as a people, the above observations are
quite theoretical. Given my five decades of clinical experience, I am much
more pessimistic of our ultimate outcome as a species.

Richard G Kensinger, MSW