Dear list, I don't know if anyone might be interested in my anecdotal accounts, but as these are related directly to semiotic theory, perhaps there's a good chance that someone will find this post useful. Recent experiences (as a refugee to the northern hemisphere) and observations that I have made are converging to a most intriguing interpretation that I think is worth sharing with anyone that might be receptive to it.
It is now fairly well established that a considerable proportion of a neuroplastic brain's "wiring" takes place within the first few years of life. One such estimate (Jill Stamm of Arizona State University) is that 90% of a brain's "wiring" is accomplished within the first four years of life. Whatever figure we accept, there would appear to be little reason to doubt that the most substantial developments in the human brain take place principally under the care of the primary nurturer. So what is the role of the primary nurturer? As I am currently having to contend with resettlement priorities, I am not really credentialed to frame any of this from the perspective of a formal narrative. But my best guess is that it relates most fundamentally to pragmatism... it is the primary nurturer that first defines the things that matter. By contrast, it is the provider (typically the male role) upon whom the onus is to make it (the things that matter) happen. In this we see the emergence of a division of labour between the sexes that contends with two aspects of "knowing how to be." For one, the priority is the cultural known, while for the other, it is the cultural unknown (the cultural unknown is perhaps best embodied in the things that happen "out there", that mysterious place that Dad goes to to do his thing while Mom raises the kids at home). In more recent discussions in another forum, I made the observation that you can never really understand a culture as a transplanted visitor to it. Why not? Because without experiencing a childhood in that culture, you do not have a window to the subconscious of that culture. More specifically, you are not privy to the things that really matter in that culture (pragmatism). This brings us to two further aspects of knowing how to be as they relate to the cultural known: 1) We first learn how to be from our primary nurturer... this stuff wires brains at a fundamental level; 2) Cultural experiences also wire brains at a fundamental level. This follows given that you can never understand a culture unless you are exposed to it from a young age. If you are not exposed to a culture's subconscious, as it is experienced in childhood, you are destined never to fathom its deepest secrets. As an outsider to the culture, you are, at best, stuck with theoretical interpretations of it. See footnote 3. There are sweeping, wide-ranging ramifications here that I can't go into... I'm trying to keep things simple in this post. But there is a basic model here for interconnectedness where matriarchal authority establishes the things that matter, but that matriarchal authority, like patriarchal authority, does not magically materialize from a vacuum. When women choose the fathers of their children, they are making a statement about what their culture stands for (or what they WANT their culture to stand for)... they are accepting its terms... so yes, the mother wires the child... but it is the culture that wires the mother as she matures within it... and it is men that play the greater role in the evolution of said culture and what the culture stands for. Men prioritized as soldiers and workers, men valued as leaders and inventors, are all manifesting cultural priorities and how these should be accomplished. Thus a nested hierarchy of influences... the child is influenced by the mother but the mother is influenced by the culture, where men (who were first raised by mothers) have the most immediate bearing on cultural evolution and identity. Men are the visible statement of what that culture stands for, whereas women are the invisible substance of what that culture stands for. One is more inclined to the manifested thought, the other is more inclined to the unmanifested desire (potential), hence the relevance of Peircean categories. See footnote 4. Woman's "thrill of the forbidden" relates to the cultural forbidden, hence the manner in which unmanifested desire (potential) interfaces with manifested culture. Again, the implications are complex, far beyond what can be covered in a brief email. Trying not to go off at too much of a tangent though... to see the world "through the eyes of a child" one must cast off their cultural knowns, and a refugee is well-placed to do precisely this. For example, when I was in the US last year, and more recently now in Europe, with my bid for asylum in the US now having fallen through. Seeing everything with the newness of "the eyes of a child" turns the experience into an adventure that can never be replicated as a tourist visiting on holidays. Central to this process of seeing "through the eyes of a child" is the idea of leaving it all behind you, and severing all prior assumptions held about the way the world works. Again, all this bears directly on the Peircean categories. See footnote 5. But I digress. None of this is really knew. Religions the world over often factor "transformation" into their narratives. What is new, hopefully, is its scope for re-interpreting in the context of an academic (Peircean) narrative. CONCLUSION We need to consider knowing how to be as perhaps the most fundamental principle of the universe. It has implications for gender roles, self/identity and evolution. Birds to it, ants do it, dogs do it, neurons do it, stem cells do it, feral kids do it, humans do it. Maybe even atoms do it. Knowing how to be is fairly integral to a compelling axiomatic framework for the semiotic sciences. If anyone has the patience to have read thus far, by all means feel free to contact me if you have any further questions. sj Budapest +36205168350 FOOTNOTES: Digressing from the above, a couple of other tangential observations worth footnoting: 1) THE PROBLEM OF FALSIFIABILITY: While all this can be described within the context of a reliable theoretical-axiomatic framework, it can never really become substantiated for one simple reason... you cannot explain your transformed desires in a manner that satisfies the scientific method. There is only one way to apprehend the nature of desire (and its flipside, fear or pain), and that is to experience desire (fear), and how it changes with experience. Phrasing this another way... you cannot merely "wish" to change... no matter how strongly you think you want something, if you are unwilling to leave behind those earthly things that have come to define you, then you will never change, and no amount of indoctrination or self-flagellation will alter that. These things are very real, they wire brains, but it is impossible to test them or empirically verify them in the spirit of falsifiability (insofar as brain-scan and brain-mapping technologies might be able). You can only ever work out their truths for yourself. We are trapped in our bodies and our subjectivity. 2) ALTERNATIVE MECHANISM FOR INHERITANCE: Inheritance of behaviour across the generations... given the above, the question of inheritance of behaviour by genes and DNA becomes even more troubling. Beyond the scope of physical biology (the body is important in providing the predispositions to choices made by mind-bodies... the analogy comparing bodies to tools), you can do away entirely with any reference to genes/DNA, and still have a reasonable explanation for inheritance of behaviour across the generations. The genocentric model - certainly from the perspective of behaviour, psychology and culture - needs to be seriously scrutinized and not blindly accepted as the status quo's null hypothesis. 3) CULTURAL EXPERIENCE WIRING BRAINS: There are of course, shades of grey as to the extent that one can "know" their own culture... from those who accept its terms without question, to those who experience psychological pathologies (for example, schizophrenia) because they refuse to accept its terms. But this is too tangential to what I am trying to summarize here. 4) SYSTEMS VIEW: I suspect something analogous takes place at the neuron/glia interface in the brain. 5) EYES OF A CHILD: Leaving things undefined... motivated more out of curiosity and amazement than survival or the meeting of needs. To start out afresh, knowing nothing, as if you are seeing the world for the first time. 6) DASEIN: The temptation might be to reframe "knowing how to be" in the context of Martin Heidegger's Dasein. And indeed it is certainly related, but Dasein is too anthropocentric from a biosemiotic perspective. Heidegger did not extend his Dasein to the next level... the idea of tying phenomenology to knowing how to be, and that every living agent has to learn how to be. People immersed in culture (Dasein as being in the world) learn from culture how to be. No living agent ever has any "facts" about the world. There is no such thing as instinctual preprogramming to provide said facts.
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