there is a condition in animal behaviour called learned helplessness. If you put an animal in a situation where it is constantly shocked, it will first start to escape and become very violent. After it is clear there is no escape, the animal will stop trying, and will continue to be shocked willingly even if the opportunity to escape presents itself.
^but im not talking about learned helplessness. that is just letting go of ONE type of hope. i.e. escaping a specified predicament/situation. but im talking about hope here as in ALL hope concerning everything you have hope about. hope as a fealing/emotion. learned helplessness is more of a behaviour.
I think Leon's question about losing all hope involves more than depression. I suspect that if all hope were actually lost, a person would not even be aware that he is hopeless.
can you feal so much emotional pain that you cant even feal yourself?
H'm. I didn't interpret the question that way. However, clinical depression can involve emotional numbness/denial/apathy (though it is certainly not the only state which can do so). Paradoxically, it can even lead to elation when suicide is contemplated. Suicide--the anticipated freedom from emotional pain, against which numbness is a temporary, incomplete fix--returns a sense of control and hope.
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The self is the image/idea we create for ourselves of what we are. Its our identity. That identity can lose hope, and we can lose hope if we give attention to that identity.
People could try to give up being themselves. Its always the self who loses hope.
Don't teach a child what hope is, and bring them up in an environment that is devoid of meaningful stimuli that would lead to such emotions. And yeah, they'll have no hope.
It's possible to be devoid of ANY emotion, provided it isn't linked directly to brain states caused by evolutionary programming. Even then, say with crying when a child is hungry, they don't "desire" it unless they know what it means to desire...it's just a rote bio-chemical response that happens because natural selection has favored genes that trigger such responses. The response is entirely extrinsically causal, and requires no formal emotion.
It's impossible in a practical sense due to the way we live our lives, but as long as we're talking in hypotheticals there's no real problem with doing it.
The word/concept/etc. At birth a child cannot hope because they have no frame of reference with which to experience "hope." Thus, a state can exist where hope is non-existent and impossible to have.
Like I said, impossible in practical terms because a child will stumble on "hope" in their life even if the word isn't formally introduced, but in a hypothetical situation (which would probably have to be devoid of any meaningful stimuli) it's possible.
I don't think it needs to be taught. We learn to recognize it, to label it, but I don't think it's something we learn, per se, anymore than we learn anger. Perhaps teaching hope means pointing out what situations warrant anticipating a positive outcome (but then, isn't that "giving one hope"?).
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Feb 25th, 2008 03:36 PM
