Symbiotic Psychology: Linking Academic and Physical Education
Success is a state of being.
An individual’s biology has evolved over millions of years of survival of the fittest, most powerful, strongest, and agile of bodies as well as survival of the most clever, creative, and cunning minds that ever have lived on this planet. An individual’s evolutionary heritage has survived billions upon billions of battles, conflicts, and encounters and is now at the pinnacle, the top, the summit of the highest peaks.
Emotions are the Perception of Physiology Precipitated by Cognition
A character may be emotionally driven in a book, movie, opera, play, song, or video, but in science emotions do not drive behavior. Cognition, not emotion, precipitates the changes and states of neurological, biochemical, and physiological being in the brain and body that drives behavior. Emotions are the perception of these changes and states of physiological being. This is the evolved cognitive-emotional foundation within humanity that allows well researched and evidenced based cognitive behavior modification therapies to work and to be successful. Teachers in academic education (language, literature, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and law) and coaches (athletics and sports) can and must work together in developing a student’s cognitive-emotional dynamics that are in harmony with their evolutionary heritage of strength, speed, stamina, agility, cunning, health, well-being, and successful decision-making prowess and ability.
The Language of Cooperation vs. the Language of Conflict and Control: The Linguistic Semantics of Cognitive vs. Emotional Dysregulation
Ancient Greek philosophers and today’s academic dissertations of emotional suffering, slavery, and vulnerability exist only when cognitively dwelling upon the lack or absence of that which is wanted, desired, or intended. When these emotionally negative cognitive activities are re-processed, re-structured, and re-developed into emotionally positive cognitions, a being of emotional suffering, slavery, and vulnerability is transformed, transmuted, and renovated into a being of joy, freedom, and power with the imaginative, artistic, and creative mind necessary to fashion and manifest their wanted, desired, and intended world, reality, truth, and favored fortune.
Every writer since Homer reflects the emotional linguistics of his “Iliad” (inscribed nearly 3000 years ago); and millions of years of cognitive-emotional evolution have been (and are being) linguistically redefined and sabotaged by our language and literary institutions (Jackson, 2023). Language and literary artisans are instrumental to the hundreds of thousands yearly suicide deaths, reprehensible mass shootings, and the human degradation and insanity now on exhibit in the Mid-East.
Contrary to writing standards, conventions, and implications, cognition, not emotion, precipitates the changes and states of biochemical, neurological, and physiological being that drives behavior. Emotions are not causal but an effect and the perception of these changes and states of physiology. Teachers within all academic disciplines and authors, poets, journalists, and playwrights must re-learn and re-develop our emotional language to mirror our cognitive-emotional evolutionary, and symbiotic heritage of the heart, mind, and body.
Positive, good-feeling emotions, moods, attitudes, and feelings have an evolved correlation with health, well-being, and effective and successful decision-making abilities and prowess. Negative, bad feeling emotions, moods, attitudes, and feelings have an evolved correlation with their negation. If this were not so, humanity would not have survived the evolutionary mill.
And therefore, contrary to our literary works of science and art, emotions instead of conflicting with, and controlled by, the cognitive mind as professed by psychology (and our psychological institutions of religion, law, politics, and philosophy), have evolved to guide our cognitive and physical acts away from negative, bad feeling destructive behavior and towards positive, good feeling constructive behavior. The solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict lies within this new linguistics of cognitive-emotional cooperative, instead of conflict and control, behavior and law.
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Evolved Cognitive-Emotional Dynamics: Emotions Are an Awareness of a Physiology Precipitated by Cognition
Extensively researched and evidence based cognitive behavior modification therapies work because emotions are an awareness of changes and states of biochemical and neurological being precipitated by cognition.
Emotions have evolved not to be controlled by cognitive behavior but to guide cognitive behavior because positive, good emotional feeling cognitive behavior has an evolved correlation with health, well-being, and effective decision-making prowess and abilities; and negative, bad emotional feeling cognitive behavior has an evolved correlation with the negation of health, well-being, and effective decision-making prowess and ability. If this were not so, humanity would not have survived the evolutionary mill.
Cognitive-Emotional Health Education in our Schools, Prisons, and Psychological Therapies for the Health, Well-Being, and Success of
Every Individual and the Culture and Society in Which They Live
Literary educators (as well as play writes, authors, and psychotherapists) should all embrace and teach how an individual’s own internal (and external) language precipitates the physiology of positive, good-feeling emotions, moods, attitudes, and feelings (that have an evolved correlation with health, well-being, and effective and successful decision-making prowess and abilities). Literary educators can also teach how an individual’s internal (and external) language precipitates the physiology of negative, bad-feeling emotions, moods, attitudes, and feelings (that have an evolved correlation with the lack of health, well-being, and successful decision-making prowess and abilities).
The Symbiotic Awareness Between Thoughts, Emotions, and Biochemistry
In 1993, while reaching for the key to get into my apartment, I had my “eureka” moment…. “I am aware of a connection between my thoughts and my feelings. Does that mean I am also aware of my biochemistry?” The significance of this question echoes within my nearly 15-years of mental and emotional disorders and dysfunction… from psychotic mania, suicidal depression (with tendencies of schizophrenia) along with the accompanying (and necessary) mental hospitals, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists (and their torturous medications) …. all because I have a “biochemical imbalance.”
“Stop…stop…STOP…. Think! The scientific community once failed to recognize the equivalency between mass and energy… (until a guy named Einstein came along)…. Is there an interdependence between emotions, cognition, and physiology that current psychological science has failed to acknowledge?”
As I put my key into the lock and unbolted the door to my apartment, I again asked myself, “Are thoughts and emotions two separate entities or does biochemistry provide some interconnective link?” That is, by my awareness of my thoughts and feelings, am I also aware of my biochemistry? Do I now have my own key to manipulating my own biochemical makeup other than the pharmaceutical remedies prescribed by my doctors? When I am depressed or manic and I have a “biochemical imbalance” does that mean when I am doing well I have a “biochemical in-balance?” Do good emotional feeling thoughts have a correlation with a healthy biochemistry? And, do bad emotional feeling thoughts have a correlation with an unhealthy biochemistry? My answer was “YES!” … and 3-years later, 17-years after my first psychotic/manic episode, I saw the last of mental hospitals, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapist, and their pharmaceutical therapies.
My internal war was over. I had won my freedom. But another conflict, the re-education of those very same academics who kept me imprisoned within their flawed emotional dynamics based on Homer’s 3000-year-old erroneous emotionally driven behavior linguistics, had just begun. My battle was (and is) to free the current population of mental and emotional inmates who are falsely imprisoned, suffer, and even die within a torturous illusion of cognitive-emotional disorders and dysfunction.
Revitalizing a Failed SEL (Social Emotional Learning) Initiative:
The Role of Primary and Secondary School Language and Literary Educators
As primary and secondary school language and literary teachers establish how an author molds, shapes, and develops the emotional aura that drives a character, scene, and totality of a book to their students, so too can these same educators demonstrate to their students how one’s own cognitive perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, and rationale molds, shapes, and develops one’s own emotional constitution. These educators teach how an author intentionally and purposely designs into a character their cognitive-emotional make-up to drive the author’s story. These same teachers can demonstrate to their own students how they also can intentionally and purposely develop their own cognitive-emotional being within their own life’s story. The question is, how does the student want and desire to feel as they go through their own life’s adventures? (Answer: What cognitive activities (perceptions, thoughts, memories, imaginings, beliefs, and rationale) is the student developing and dwelling upon in their own life’s story? The caveat being that positive, good-feeling emotions, moods, attitudes, and feelings have an evolved correlation with health, well-being, and successful decision-making prowess and abilities and negative, bad-feeling emotions, moods, attitudes, and feelings have an evolved correlation with the negation of health, well-being, and successful decision-making prowess and abilities.)
Emotions: The Engineering Mechanics vs. The Linguistic Poetry
The imagery, poetry, and metaphoric linguistics of a “sunset” or “sunrise” abound throughout the thousands of years of language and literature. But, from an engineering mechanics viewpoint, the sun is not setting, nor is it rising. The viewer is standing on a sphere that is rotating and it is this rotation that gives the illusion of the sun setting or rising in the distance. But what song would it be to say instead of “Sunrise, sunset; swiftly flow the days…,” but to say “Rotating earth, rotating earth; 400 miles per hour (at our latitude) speed the days……?”
But there is a serious matter within the linguistics of emotional words, such as hate, love, anger, envy, joy, etc. Understanding the emotional beauty, mystery, and depth within the great literary and poetic works of the ages is not the same as understanding emotions engineering mechanics within the physical body and brain to guide cognitive behavior towards health, well-being, and successful decision-making prowess and ability.
Love, hate, revenge, envy, or joy may “drive” a character in a book, movie, video, or song, but technically, emotions do not drive behavior. Emotions are the conscious awareness of the neurological, biochemical, and physiological changes and states of being that do drive behavior. And, it is our cognitive activities of the mind, such as thoughts, memories, imagery, and reasoning that precipitates the highly orchestrated changes in physiology that drives behavior.
Our language of emotionally driven behavior is a flawed, linguistic shortcut that fails to convey the evolutionary role of negative, bad-feeling emotions, moods, attitudes, and feelings in guiding our cognitive activities away from destruction and towards positive, good-feeling emotions, moods, attitudes, and feeling of health, well-being, and successful decision-making prowess and ability.
Our primary and secondary language and literary educators are teaching a flawed psychology of emotionally driven behavior. This poetic, metaphoric, and literary education must be augmented with the awareness and understanding of emotions evolutionary function to re-process, re-structure, and re-organize unhealthy, dis-empowering, negative, and bad feeling cognitive behaviors of failure into healthy empowering, positive, and good-feeling cognitive activities of success. Teaching the skills, abilities, and understandings of our cognitive-emotional health dynamics is especially critical in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities that lack the social capitol of success.
Today’s academic theory of emotionally driven behavior, first linguistically inscribed within Homer’s “Iliad” nearly 3000 years ago, and currently utilized within today’s philosophy, religion, sociology, and law, is flawed and fails to incorporate changes and states of physiology in its cognition-emotions-behavior triangle paradigm.
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“Because cognition precipitates the neurological, biological, and physiological changes and states of being that is perceived as emotion, cognition, not emotion, drives behavior. Emotion is an effect, cognition is cause.”
” Positive, good feeling emotions, moods, attitudes, and feelings have an evolved correlation with health, well-being, and successful decision-making prowess (and their actualization). Negative, bad feeling emotions, moods, attitudes, and feelings have an evolved correlation with their negation. If this were not so, humanity would not have survived the evolutionary mill.
Because joy has an evolved correlation with health, well-being, and successful decision-making prowess and actualization, we have evolved to be joyous beings. Yet a self-centered feels-good-is-good morality must be tempered within a compassionate awareness of the symbiotic connection between all humanity. The success of any educational institution cannot be defined solely by their students’ ability to cognitively achieve; success must be defined by their students’ ability to achieve with the presence of health, vigor, and joy along with the necessary cognitive skills, abilities, and motivation to nurture these learning conditions throughout life by employing one’s own evolved cognitive-emotional bio-feedback mechanisms within a compassionate awareness of the interdependence of all life.
Cognitive-emotional development within an individual is a process of learning, practicing, and utilizing a variety of cognitive-emotional re-processing techniques to where positive good-feeling emotions, moods, and feelings accentuate physical expression and behavior.
The greatness of the human life experience emerges from the flames of individual desire arising out of hell’s fiery conflicts on earth. Intention is forged in these fires. Emotion aligns our journey with these new intentions. Each succeeding generation will have its own mountains to climb and waters to cross with their own stars to navigate towards. Intent is that guiding star; and it is our emotions that perceive its light. The more joyous the feeling, the more harmonious and powerful the wonders revealed through life’s journey.
