Over the last 20 years neuroscientists have been discovering how plastic the brain is. The principle that has emerged is “what fires together, wires together”, which means structure follows function, or “the brain you have is a function of the events which have shaped you”.
Contrary to popular opinion, there is an emerging consensus in the brain and mind sciences that the mind is a function of a hyper-complex dynamical symmetry between brain and world, and between brain and itself (metacognition).
Symmetry is a state of affairs where one thing reflects or translates an exact copy of itself. So, humans have bilateral symmetry in body structure; we have two eyes, two ears, two nostrils. This symmetry is very much a dynamical circumstance of gravity on the way biophysical processes self-organize towards stability. The wonder of what living systems - animals - are, is that they are simultaneously highly constrained biochemical patterns that appear to be controlled by a hierarchy of ‘dissipative structures’ - or the thermodynamically controlled mechanisms which structure processes in coherent ways. These ways are what physicists term ‘the path of least resistance’, which can be geometrodynamically conceptualized as a very high level symmetry - or complementarity - between world and organism. At the same time, these patterns give rise to a ‘cybernetic’ mind system that produces a feeling of agency, and in human beings, a feeling of self, an ability to control the contents of attention, and an ability to conceptualize in tensed and metaphorical ways i.e. ‘imagination’.
There is an interesting continuity being created by the philosophical approach known as ‘dynamical systems theory’, between origin of life research, evolutionary theory (punctuated equilibrium) material engagement theory in Anthropology, and developmental sciences. The rule of thumb is: the organism is always seeking to adapt itself towards a ‘fittedness’ with the world around it. The organism is secondary to the world: the environment ‘selects’, and the organism adapts by channeling metabolic processes towards more efficient pathways.
Now enter mainstream culture, and the way we talk about homosexuality. There is a sort of subtle incoherence that is never properly named, but which is there, oftentimes bothering the minds of people who are easily scapegoated as ‘homophobes’, because there is an affective disturbance, or problem, with the whole idea of homosexuality. The complexity of our response is really a function of the complexity of the history of the evolution of human cultures over the last 7,000 years, a situation that refers to a whole gamut of changes that metaphlorically ‘link’ together in a cultural-semiotic web linking groups together, partly through the subterfuge of language, culture and tradition, but mainly through the force of social pressure - the fear of shame and the pride of having power, of being “a part of the crowd”.
So what is it that bothers us, but the obvious problem of the intimacy of sexuality, and the incoherence of a same-sex sexual interactions? To whom, or to what, do we guilt, but our own sense of the inherent complementarity that organizes our being - the beginning of life of ‘self’ (observing consciousness) and body (feelings), which morphs into the self, and the other face - the other human (intersubjectivity). Self and other are basic categories that provide the semiotic foundation for biodynamical processes in the brain. The linking force is what the psychologist Dan Stern called “forms of vitality”, which are simultaneously synchronized brain waves (on the ‘outside’) and the linking chains of metaphorical feelings - ‘likeness’ between things, which maps bodily feelings onto social interactions, and then onto sexual orientation.
The truth is, everything is logically constructed - nature isn’t random, and living organisms are not controlled by “selfish genes”. The system is more than any one part, and what ‘decides’ the way a system functions is simply how well its dynamics are adapted to the contingencies required for living.
To be sensitive to the reality of what I’m talking about entails understanding the fundamentally physical nature of your existence: the mind is not separate from the body, but is an emergent property of its dynamical activity. If you respect this iron-clad law of biology, then you will have to respect that all events that arise within the mind are a function of dynamical interactions, both relating to homeostatic regulation, which is itself a function of how well you sleep, how regularly you eat, how well you eat, substances you may abuse (coffee, alcohol, cannabis, cigarettes), bacteria/parasites handled by the immune system, and the quality of your social relationships, which is a function of how well emotions are communicated, which is in itself a very broad category, and how benignly they are accepted and processed in conversations.
Another truth is this: humans are being misled as to the nature of homosexuality, largely because they are being misled at a basic level about the nature of their identity: that it is emergent, and dependent, on an ontological loop between a real outside world and their own biophysical structuring.
Is this merely an overzealous humanitarianism that seeks to protect a mistreated minority group? That is, the people who think this way are intellectually superficial - and don’t read, or perhaps, cherry-pick, information suiting their own views? I imagine a good chunk of people are organized at this sort of ‘visceral’ level, not caring or bothering to think about the metaphysical assumptions underlying the etiology of homosexuality - the belief that it is ‘essential’ to their character, rather than being an emergent property of a real life sequence of interactions between self and an environment, and the way certain traumatc events induce a structural asymmetry that ‘opens up’ certain semiotic pathways when a person gets older. For instance, the experience of being ‘victimized’ is semiotically akin to the passivity of receiving anal. The passivity, or the feeling of ‘immobility’, that comes with being emotionally bullied by a parent is not something particularly liked, but it is definitely an experience which exists within our brain structuring, ordering other experiences through the force of its metaphorical energy. It is this sort of explanation that queer theorists and other postmodernists avoid because it goes to the root of what postmodernism is really all about: prioritizing ‘imagination’ and ‘fantasy’ over reality and physical laws. The believers in this creed not only believe imagination, or the human perspective, to b beyond science, but they also fail to realize that modern day neuroscience, developmental psychology, and psychodynamic theory, can explain why humans feel the way they feel, what these feelings represent, and what sort of interactions create them. It is probabilistic - and the older the organism gets, the more complex these probabilities. Yet, attachment theory provides basic ‘limiting’ categories that slots every person within a category of attachment that gains its authority from modern insight into the brain - and whats called the “autonomic nervous system”. The ANS manages, and modulates the capacities, of the higher cortical areas of our brain. So, if your immune system is engaged in fighting off a viral infection, less bloodflow will move to the most evolved cortex because the solitary nucleus - a brainstem area - controls how energy will be organized within the entire biophysical system.
Homosexuality is not evil, of course, but it does conflict with our more existential and metaphysical feelings of being in a complementarity with the universe. The complementarity of self and body, self and other, should also logically extend to self and universe. The male and female form metaphorically embody this pattern, and so, the way we are logically forced to reason about reality logically compels us to acknowledge the significance of complementarity as a mental organizing vector that honors the symmetry and complementarity that exists between self and reality.
Should we demonize homosexuals? Of course not, and please do not take this conversation as implying anything of the kind. This thread is mostly philosophical in its orientation, but also practical, because it criticizes the absence of cause-effect thinking in our discussion of these things, and also, even more importantly, the apparent value system being forced on people by an elite class which has much to gain by dissociating its population with sexual identity politics, a logical effect of its dissonance with our higher intuitiions of being ‘at one’ with the universe, and so, seeking to avoid ways of being that embody ‘selfishness’ - which homosexuality has long been metaphorically interpreted as being, because male + male is akin to self + itself (or egotism, pridefulness). Self worship is metaphorically likened to homosexual deviance. Being “other” focused is akin to male + female. This metaphorical transformation is a function of what ‘things mean’ for the developing system, and how passivity and activity, ultimately regulate the safety the self feels to ‘explore’ the other, metaphorically likened to the ‘sex that is other from your own’, which becomes a much more powerful organizing factor when puberty hits. Thus, sexual orientation is not anythin ‘essential’, but a developmental pathway created by an interactive history which generated a passivity, a self-self focus (insecurity) which carries insecurity. Promotion of sexual identity issues is a profound broadcasting device for creating more homosexuals, so long as society and the economy keeps us insecure, and the culture continues to breakdown semiotic categories of gender, and sexual orientation, more and more people will shift as a function of that metaphorical continuum between interpersonal interaction (recognition expectations) and sexual orientation (sexual orientation expectations); since we live in a society where people routinely ignore the needs of the other - treating the other as fundamentally “other” - as literally outide their being (a delusion), it is not surprising that people experience an absence of desire for the other sex, and a great deal of desire for their own: might this not being an expression of this continuum, where the self-focused ego - the psychodynamic structure of the mind - easily assimilates n identity state which experiences sexual desire for the same sex? Such explorations are perfectly legitimate and justified by scientific evidence and the theories which operate in various physical scientific disciplines. That it “feels wrong” is totally a function of the value-system of postmodern “liberalism” beating the drum of acceptance without at all addressing (a) etiology (b) the relationality of existence (c) as a function of a and b, the SUGGESTIBILITY of anxious and insecure people to being ‘recruited’ into an identity that is no more fundamental to the self than any other experience we have.