HIKIKOMORI and COVID19: as Products of the Current Advanced Technological Society
The aim: the cognitive sciences have had to assimilate the human mind functioning’s to the computer software’s one. The theory and/or theories which developed about that, they influenced the approach to mental processes in decisive and overbearing way. According to the biological theory of the mind by Bernardini Alba, this survey means to make clear why the approach of the cognitive sciences to the mental processes is wrong and its relapse is dangerous either on man or on environment.
Materials and Methods:
To this end, we have taken into consideration a phenomenon which showed in the Asian Countries (Japan) about the middle of years 80 at the beginning, at the present, it is growing in all countries technologically advanced, it is named hikikomori. In our view, it is the litmus paper which allow us to assert that the functional approach of the cognitive sciences to mental process is wrong and unable to protect mental health and environment as well. We call behavioural disturbance the phenomenon above named, it shows in healthy subjects, in adolescent age into a middle-high socio-economic context. It is primely characterized by:
1. school drop-out
2. voluntary isolation from society
3. refusing to go out
In other words, the subject refuses to leave his room where on the contrary he spends one’s time on front video games, cartoons, and on-line connections by internet. He lives in a virtual reality “training” his nervous system to process only visual and auditory information, the only one the technological tool can give him and the only one the cognitive sciences have taken into consideration in order to formulate their theory. The disturbance is also coupled with comorbidity such as pathological anxiety, agoraphobia, depression, narcissism, aggressivity and psychosis.
This phenomenon: hikkomori highlights, in a very clear way, how the lack of the elaboration of proprioceptive information/personal experience, muscular energy of the internal space gives rise to disturbances of the mental-behavioural process. According to our theory, the subject has lost the reference system/body on which to align in the unit of time the two aspects of energy coming from the two spaces, then, the consciousness of the three-dimensional movement/use of energy and its meaning. On the contrary, he only relays on visual and auditory information of the external space. Without the three-dimensional muscle-skeletal reference system, the sense organs: sight and hearing elaborate the pertinent information in a unidimensional way along a sole axis according to the laws of physics. The information remains external no subjectively texted and without consciousness, the subject:
1. remains “closed out” in the external space of which he elaborates consciously only one dimension.
2. the mental process is partial, the behaviour is unfit and pathologic
3. does not know the three-dimensional movement’s meaning of the energy, he has not intuition, then he is unable to plan useful answers in order to adapt oneself to external world; consistently he fears for external spaces and becomes anxious.
4. has poor self-confidence, because he has not self-consciousness.
5. has poor empathy.
All of the characteristics above mentioned have been illustrated in thesis “violence and consciousness in defence of the self” (see blog). Now we want pay more attention to empathy; that is: why hikikomori is unable to relate to the external word including other people. In particular we want to correlate the empathy according to the cognitive science’ functionalist approach and the mind’s biological approach by Alba Bernardini.
DISCUSSION
To do that, we have to go back to the main aim of the cognitive sciences: to build a processor of information able to work as human mind (computer, artificial intelligence). According to these researchers it is possible to infer from observable behaviours the underling mental constructs and to assimilate the software’s working to human mental process. This means, the mental construct to which they referred was the behaviour but they left out the inexplicable black box. According to the biological theory of the mind, the behaviour is the phase three or top-down, the phase one and two or button-up of the cognitive process is the black box now we know.
In accordance with the biological theory of the mind, in phase one and two, button-up, the synchronous perception of the two aspects of energy of the two spaces gives rise to neural paths, to memory formation, to awareness/attention, to arousal on the basis of the biological substrate which the genetic and the emotion/intention cause consistently with the experienced/lived experiences. On the contrary, the cognitive sciences had to build a mental construct/behaviour/ bypassing the button-up, by probable mathematic calculation and coded, saved memories into units/bits. According to Gerald M. Edelman:” mental functions cannot be studied by theoretical constructs based on cognitive psychology and computer modelling – rather they have to be rooted in the real biology of brain and brain evolution” (pag.325 left brain right brain S.P. Springer, G. Deutsch; 2003).
The question is:” a mind/processor conceived in this way on which the consciousness is left out can it give an explain about the ability to understand other people and their emotions and intentions, to be empathic? Concerning this, the cognitive sciences answered with intuitive intelligence (see blog) by a top-down process as we are going to see further on.
About the years ’1980, ’90, by neuroimaging, G. Rizzolatti and Coll. discovered mirror neurons: a cluster of neurons which fire either when the monkey carries action out, or when it observes the same action carried out by other people. These neurons were discovered in the man as well. According to these researchers mirror neurons are responsible for empathy even if the consciousness is left out. This statement, believed still true on which the cognitive sciences and the current psychology are rooted, it must be reviewed and considered again on the light of the biological theory of the mind by Bernardini Alba (2008).
The G. Rizzolatti’s discovery has been made by neuroimaging, so it must be considered as an answer/top-down consequent to the button-up process which is below and comes before. According to the biological theory of the mind, on the button-up process the neurons of the right hemisphere, activated by low frequencies of energy, in the unit of time mirror, from right to left and/or vice versa, they reverse up-down as on a copy of carbon paper on the neurons of the left hemisphere, activated by the high frequencies of the same energy. In virtue of the motor experience and of the synchronous upsetting on the three-dimensional axes, the information of the two spaces acquires three-dimensionality, subjectivity, consciousness and it pass from objective to subjective making the empathy possible.
This passage is crucial, Bernardini Alba gave the biological basis to the consciousness because she was the first to take into consideration the muscular energy as type energy, the two aspects of energy, the body as reference system on which the two aspects of energy of two spaces align in the unit of time to be elaborated as the muscular energy of the sole internal space. The energy/information of the two space becomes part of the subject’s neural paths in accordance with the biological substrate and hence, with the emotional states. For these reasons, only if the mirroring happened on the button-up phases, the mirror neurons G, Rizzolatti discovered by neuroimaging can fire in top-down phase: in the autistic subjects this is not possible for example. They are however unable to make us known about the underling deficit: synchronism between high and low frequencies of the energy. They don’t allow to recover of the cognitive-behavioural process in order to get aware knowledge (see blog).
CONCLUSION
As far as we have above argued, it is evident that:
1. the unfit use of the technologies causes cognitive-behavioural deficits (F81, hikikomori for example)
2. the mirror neurons discovered by G. Rizzolatti do not allow us to know the underling crucial process.
3. the current psychology is unable to take care in an effective way the subjects with cognitive-psychological-behavioural disturbances.
4. a set of rules agreed at international level is necessary in order to settle the right use of the technologies.
The box above shows differences between the two theories: functionalist and biological approach..
To conclude, the cognitive sciences took the human mind as a model to build artificial mind, but if the man develops his mental process relaying to artificial mind/computer, he loses consciousness of the self and becomes hikikomori. He can be defined as the most faithful human product to the computer’s software, he is unable to understand the real world and he wishes to live in the virtual one he is neither engine nor men.
Unlike the cognitive sciences, the biological theory of the mind makes possible to individualize the perceptive deficit in button-up process, and to proceed to re-education or prevention in a scientific way. The G. Rizzolatti’s discovery about mirror neurons must be reconsidered in order to avoid false truths. The science goes on, to recognize some positions have been gone over it is not shame because the sciences progress is also based on results get by who came before. If, on the contrary, in spite of scientific evidence it insists on outdated positions, the scientists cannot be defined stupid, but interested and intellectually dishonest (see law 170/2010 art. blog).
The technological development gave rise to huge progress, but if the use of technologies will not be regulated, the technology will destroy the man. The Eistein’s saying:” when the technology will overcome the man, the society will fill with foolish”, will have a confirmation.
To make complete our survey, let go back to psychology of the mass we have reformulate on the Freud’s hypothesis (see thesis staticity and totalitarism) on which we maintain man and society share the same cognitive-psychological process. In accordance with this theory, close to hikikomori phenomenon we have a parallel phenomenon in the society: COVID19 pandemic for example.
How hikikomori and COVID19 pandemic are they correlated according to us? The great technological development, the socio-economic one as well are happened not only to detriment of the men’s mental health but also to detriment of the environment in which the man lives and works. The natural environment has not been and is not respected at all. The profit is the main interest who must be get at any cost. The clime time by time is changing in rapid and dramatic way. In spite of the continuous attempts of intervention in order to stop this negative evolution, the world’s Big are unable to found un agreement at international level in order put into practice an effective strategic plan. We are afraid, if “hikikomori” gain power, an agreement will be impossible to reach to get. Climatic changes besides (among other things) cause development of new organisms, microorganisms and virus. if we take into consideration data we will have the confirmation they give rise, in a prevalent way, in the Asiatic countries (SARS, MERS, swine plague, COVID19 for example). There from a poor and a little industrialized society, survived the catastrophe of the atomic bomb, quickly it passed through a society industrialized and technologically advanced. These populations seem to answer back without reserve, with great engagement and enthusiasm to the use of the new technologies on which they become very expert and hikikomori as well. We highlight the evidence but the causes of that should be object of a deep and careful study because the globalization makes them a phenomenon involving all in a dramatic way.
In drama there is always irony. At the present, a virus, named covid19, very aggressive and unknown to which the man has absently created the conditions for its development, now it is slipping his control, reducing very much the population of the planet together profits and world economies. The blinded progress created the conditions for its destruction taking the author with itself. The latter, in turn, undergoes to continuous intellective involution (F81 and hikikomori subjects as an example). it is not easy to foresee how we get out; we are afraid the Eistain’s prevision is already arrived, perhaps what he did not foresee was the way on which the idiots would have decided the fate of all.
We want to hope this pandemic allows survivors to think over and allows men to recover oneself. This horrible experience teaches the greatest attention must addressed men his education/formation and environment in which he lives. Men aware (as mental process), sustainable development (as common motivation) they are the two principles which man and society share, in accordance with our reformulation of the psychology of the mass; men’s physical and psychological health and national capital are the answers. It always is the same process on men as well as on society: the button-up comes before the top-down. It is very simple also resumed in a popular saying:” it is impossible to build house starting from the roof”. In our view, only if the science will be free from bias and party profit man and environment will have a chance.