Hugging monkeys

[shavastak]

Some years ago, a famous psychology experiment was done in which a young monkey was given two surrogate parents to choose from: one, a wire form with a bottle of milk in it, and the other, a fuzzy-covered wire form with no bottle. The young monkeys consistently chose the fuzzy-covered wire form, indicating the importance of comfort.

The same kind of phenomenon is taking place in New Orleans as the city rebuilds. Let me explain.

This morning there was a report on NPR about bars and strip clubs opening in New Orleans. Most of these places don't have running water or electricity yet, and they certainly don't have food - the people in the report were eating MREs. And drinking beer.

Don't decry this! Don't call them stupid or denigrate them. They are being human. I would argue that this behavior isn't just natural, it's right. It is not an indication of the weakness of the human spirit; it is an indication of the importance of comfort and enjoyment in the health of humans. There is something about each of us that recognizes that comfort and enjoyment are at least as important as food, water, and shelter - if not *more* important. It is not neglecting health to consider comfort and fun first - it is the right order to go about things, especially in this day and age where Americans typically have more stored food than their bodies know what to do with.

You may immediately bring up starving people in Africa. Of *course* they need food, and they need it desperately, but I would argue they'd be even *better* off if we gave them food, water, and books. Or movies. Or a hackeysack (they may not have the energy for football). What I'm trying to say is that the *traditional* basics (food, water, shelter, clothing) are missing a couple of very vital components.

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Edit: It might be worthwhile at this time to point out something I neglected to mention. According to the report on NPR, most of the people patronizing the strip clubs are rescue, police, and fire personnel. I may be optomistic, but it is my hope that most of them are just trying to wind down after long, tough days. The strip club owner spoke with great respect for his patrons, describing them as very hard workers.

FYI, my impression was that the bars are used by everybody.

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Edit #2: I did not intend this post to advocate the use of beer and titties as means of promoting human health. In the same way, I would not advocate giving monkeys cloth-covered wire as a means of promoting their health. Both are examples of a false, or at least less-than-ideal, source of comfort and/or fun. But I still think that providing for comfort and fun is at least as important as providing for food and water.

The subject of love was brought up, also. I think I would put love above all the others, not because I am a romantic, but because humans need to be loved to be healthy; lack of food will kill you faster, but lack of love is much much harder to recover from. Also, going to a titty bar does not in any way fulfill the need for love. Sex is not love; I would consider it to be in the 'fun' category. Watching sexy women bounce is even less like love, and even more like just fun.

Comments

[mcmiller.livejournal.com]

Yes, but Maslov.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Where did comfort fit on Maslov's hierarchy? As far as I'm concerned, I agree with shavastak; it should be right there with the essentials, or at the very least, one step up.

I've seen over and over again the problems kids experience when they are abused at home, or simply neglected. It doesn't matter if they've got food, water, shelter and clothing, if they don't have love. They can't function without it.

[nakedknight.livejournal.com]

Comfort and love are too different things. If you are looking for "love" in a strip club, then yes, there is a problem.

And where in what I said did conformity come in? Basic needs do not include beer and the naked titties of strangers. Comfort is something that can't be bought, and neither can love.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I wasn't trying to attack you or your comment, if that's what you thought, but the tone of your comment suggests more anger than I think is really relevant.

In the normal run of things, I'm not a big fan of strip clubs and such like. They sell an illusion rather than the real thing, and I find it sad. However, in a situation where EVERYONE is seeking comfort and an affirmation of life, and when the normal avenues for getting those things are not available, who am I to say that the temporary purchased comfort shouldn't be allowed? If it makes them able to function the next day in the difficult and draining lives they're leading, who are we to proscribe it? The illusion might be enough to keep them going, and if so, it's better than nothing.

BTW, while I agree that love can't be bought, comfort can to a certain extent. Especially in a situation where everyone there has a story to tell.

[nakedknight.livejournal.com]

If you don't think it's a good idea normally, what makes it better now? If anything, I would argue it is worse, because it's pulling them away from real forms of comfort. I am a little angry. It's like the little match girl. You can kill yourself chasing an illusion of comfort while your real needs go untended.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It's better now because it gives them the impetus to improve the situation to the point where the other forms of comfort, those that last longer and are not self-destructive, have the opportunity to return. It's a temporary measure to get someone over a rough spot. It doesn't become seriously destructive unless the people doing it continue after their rough spot is over.

I've had occasions where I went out drinking to forget some of the nasty stuff happening at my job. It happened perhaps three times. At this moment in time, I haven't had a drink of any kind in three months, and I don't miss it. A few nights of using liquid comfort to relieve stress did not harm me or mine in any way. Was I wrong to seek that kind of physical release? (Dancing and alcohol - I'm not into paying for sex.) I would say, no - it didn't hurt anyone, and for that moment in time, it helped relieve my stress so I could go back to my job and continue to function for a few more weeks, until a more permanent solution (i.e. the end of the school year) came about.

[nakedknight.livejournal.com]

My experience is that transient comfort brings transient relief and sucks away the motivation to make real progress.

I don't drink to get drunk, ever, and I do have an issue with it. Nothing goes away while you're drunk. The worse your problem is, the worse drinking is for you becuase it will still be there in the morning and you just lost money, time and mental health avoiding the problem and you've taken a step down the path of chemical dependence. Sure, plenty of people dance on the edge without going down the path, but in this situation, not so much.

Bad day at work? Drinking isn't that bad. Living in New Orleans? Really, really bad.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I've never been drunk, either. I don't like the loss of control that comes with it, so I rarely have more than two drinks at a time. The nights in question I had four or five - enough to be quite happy, but not enough to have a hangover.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on the issue of the benefits of transient comfort. I simply don't agree.

[nakedknight.livejournal.com]

I don't know you from Eve, so I really can't speak for your situation. And I don't live in New Orleans right now.

But I've been down and out, living hand to mouth in a literal sense. I've seen how tempting it can be. A friend of mine in that position asked me how I got out, and the answer is I made a plan and I stuck to it. I set aside the temporary comforts to, in a very real way, save my own life. I've lived off other people's leftover canned food so I had money for gas so I could work and make money and keep my bills paid until I could complete my plan. It was a very short period in my life, but I totally understand the value of temporary comfort in my own life.

It was an illusion, a crutch I leaned on when I believed I didn't have the strength to carry on. I was wrong. When that crutch was pulled away, when I didn't have money for any extra thing anymore, I didn't lay down and die. I dug deeper and found a strength that is terrifying. The will to live, the will to improve myself - I never found it in something someone sold to me.

If you still disagree with that, I can't blame you. Maybe you haven't been there, or maybe you have and you believe that it helped. I don't know. I just haven't seen it work for myself and I've watched it drag people down - whole families of people, for generation upon generation. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, much less a person I wanted to help.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

You're right that I haven't been there. I respect what you went through and what you did to get out of it, and I respectfully submit that the situation in New Orleans, where pretty much everyone is in that situation, is substantively different. I also suggest that the people taking advantage of it are in all likelihood those who already engaged in those pursuits quite often, meaning for them it wasn't a step down, just a step back into the familiar.

I've lived with moralistic stances my whole life, and I'm at the point where I dislike them intensely. I hope that the people using taverns and strip clubs as an escape are getting something out of it that they need. But even if they're not, and you're right, it's not up to us to condemn their behaviour. It's their lives, and their right to live them as they see fit.

[mcmiller.livejournal.com]

I'm just trying to say I'm not moralizing from on high, but saying from experience that it really doesn't help. And as a former soldier, I am speaking to the experience of soldiers and emergency personnel too - I've had missions that gave me tortured nightmares. For months afterward, and sometimes still... I watched people kill themselves and their families in empty comforts because they "deserved it" after a hard day. We deserve better than the illusion, and given the chance to provide for another, I would give them the best I could.

[mcmiller.livejournal.com]

http://www.envisionsoftware.com/articles/Maslows_Needs_Hierarchy.html

Comfort, to my mind, would be social or esteem. That puts it a) in the middle or b) one step from the top with physiological needs like food, water, clothing and shelter coming first.

Seeking comfort when physiological needs are not yet met is self-destructive and short sighted.

Love, on the other hand, is what gives people the will to live and the desire to seek the essentials in the first place.

Beer is not love.
Strip clubs are not love.
Drugs, alcohol, hostess cupcakes, tobacco, pornography... not love. In my mind, they are thinly veiled forms of self abuse.

These aren't two ends of a spectrum, these things are "luxuries" (if killing yourself through self abuse is a luxury - I will caveat that most of these things are only self destructive when overdone and I would argue that they are overdone by definition in New Orleans at this point) not necessities. They may serve a psychological need but without your body to live in, what good is mental health? Those kids you are talking about need the will to live. Anyone who needs beer and strip clubs to find the basic desire to live has more issues than Good Housekeeping.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I disagree. Seeking comfort can give people the impetus to work to meet their physical needs. It's a momentary relief from serious, debilitating physical and emotional stress, and it is absolutely essential to a person's well-being. Also, keep in mind that comfort can be a very physical thing, not necessarily on the level of social or esteem. When my daughter is crying, she doesn't want me to affirm her as a person; she wants me to cuddle her, stroke her hair, hug her.

Yes, I'm saying Maslow was wrong. :)

[mcmiller.livejournal.com]

Once again, I don't disagree that REAL comfort can motivate. But beer and titties (of strangers) is the illusion, not the real thing.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

True. The reason illusions are so sought-after is because they have at least some of the effects of the real thing. If transient comfort is enough to motivate them until they can find the real thing, who are we to tell them they shouldn't?

[nakedknight.livejournal.com]

Transient comfort led me to be sickly, depressed, and 120 pounds overweight. I may have the zealousness of a recent convert, but no (prescription) drug I took and no food I ate and no time that I slacked off ever gave me the energy to really change. The impetus to change comes from inside, always. No one and no thing can give it to you.

Forget love for a minute.

[lousy-timing.livejournal.com]

Strip clubs and bars can be reminders of something else that's necessary during a period of rebuilding, especially in New Orleans, and that's vitality. Think of Mardi Gras, and the entire racous celebration, the vibrancy, the over-the-top abandonment and sexual tales that come from there...

Right or wrong to you, those things are a part of what was life to those who lived there, and turning to the rekindling flames of that spirit will help the inhabitants remember what was as they go back out into the ugly reality of what is to rebuild.

[mcmiller.livejournal.com]

I would like to clarify something:

I didn't make my original comment to start a flame war. The problem with the monkey example is that those monkeys would have died without intervention. See my alt's comment on "The Little Match Girl." I am a little frustrated that grown adults are behaving in a self destructive way that I am supposed to subsidize or condone.

Do I object to them being entertained or amused or shown some loving kindness? No, not at all, not even remotely. That's the opposite of how I feel. I don't care for beer and strip clubs normally. In particular I object to people using alcohol as an emotional crutch because they destroy their own lives that way. I'm thinking of people I know here, of concrete examples of people in my life who had next to nothing and couldn't improve their financial position because of their addictions to emotional crutches. Alcohol is one I particularly object to because of it's chemical interaction with the brain.

In addition, in a city without water drinking alcohol is almost suicidal due to how it interacts with your liver. You need twice as much water to metabolize alcohol. By drinking beer, you are very quickly dehydrating yourself. From experience, MREs are VERY salt heavy. It takes 1-2 liters of water to metabolize an MRE - more in hot conditions. Drinking beer while eating MREs is a good way to kill your liver, quickly. Like, in a week. I'm seriously not joking.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I wasn't trying to start a flame war, either - just a discussion. :)

The comments about beer in a city with no water? That's the first really concrete reason why this is a bad idea that anyone has given yet, IMO.