| ashu |
Posted
on 07-Jun-01 06:14 AM
One thing few Nepalis would admit is that peaceful Nepalis,
often peaceful and nice and smiling Nepalis are quite capable
of exercising enormous, blinding rage that leads to
devastation.
(The Americans have a phrase for such a state of mind: "going postal". I prefer: "going shaigong" in memory of a friend
who died a few years ago.)
That's the kind of blind, raw rage that leads to the brandishing of "nango khukuri", brutal beatings of others, use of guns, physically shaking with anger from deep within, destroying one and others and . . . all that raw, crude, emotional, primal stuff.
Though the real story on Dipendra and the massacre will emerge
in bits and pieces in the next several days, one question that can be asked is this.
What makes an otherwise perfectly sane person lose control to distraous consequences? Could it be a case of 'amylgada hijacking'?
Here's some info:
"Located in the ancient emotional brain, the alarm circuitry centers on a series of structures that ring the barin stem, which are known as limbic system. The structure that p-lays the key role in emotional emergencies -- that make us "snap" -- is the amygdala."
"The prefontal area, the executive center, links to amylgada through what amounts to a neural highway. These neural links between amygdala and prefontal lobes act as the brain's alarm, a setup that has had immense survival value during the million of years of human evolution."
"The amygdala is the brain's emotional memory bank, repository for all our moments of triumph and failure, hope and fear, indignation of frustration. It uses these stored memories in its role as a sentinel, scanning all incoming information . . . to assess it dor threats and opportunities by matching what's happening now to the stored templates of our past experiences."
"In evolution, the amygdala most likely used its memory templates to answer questions for survival, such as "am I its prey, or is it mine?"
"The barin's crisis response still follows that ancient strategy -- though this can have dramatic drawbacks in modern . . . life."
Another example: Tyson's biting off Holyfield's ear.
*********
As poet Charles Bukowsaki put it, "It's not the big things that send us to the madhouse, not the loss of love, but the shoelace that breaks when there's no time left."
All quoted stuff above taken from: Danile Goleman's book "emotional intelligence".
oohi
"How we understand and manage our emotions is at the heart of
our success and failures in life."
ashu
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