The old skool thread
 

This is a SubSim old skool thread. Yes, I find the, urbanized misspelling of school to be humorous. In any case, the General Forum (the precursor to today's General Topics) was a place where you could learn a tremendous amount of things regarding a huge amount of topics. I loved it. And so, here is my attempt to revive that tradition. I'll be posting information and links on a variety of subjects that interest me. Feel free to discuss them, and add your own.

Two rules:

1. No politics. We didn't talk politics in the old days.

2. No 'news' current events. General interest events are fine. For example, my first topic will be about mummering and the Mummers Parade, which is topical due to the date, but not 'newsworthy' in nature.

From the title I thought it was going to be about "What we learned in school".
:rotfl2:

What about politics from the 5th century? That's not really politics, it's history. I know, I know, that answers my own question.

No, I don't really have an idea yet. This sounds pretty cool. Looking forward to your first subject. :sunny:

I can't stand the Philadelphia Mummers Parade. Every New Years, the people of southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and northern Delaware are subject to 9 hours of coverage of sexually ambiguous cross dressing and public drunkeness. In my disdain for the event, I began to research the origins of real mummery and found, of all things, cross dressing. Why?

It was simple really. Mummery was originally an English tradition of court entertainment on feast days. The actors would dress in gaudy outfits and reenact historical or mythological events in Anglo-Saxon or Gaelic culture. For example, there was almost always a St. George that would serve as both central actor and narrator. This usually meant that there was a dragon too. No word on who played the dragon.

The thing about the rules of the stage in those days were exactly as the rules of operatic performance. Women were not permitted to be actors or singers. As such, men would have to take the part of women, although mercifully castration was not necessary as it was in opera. As such, there was nothing sexual about this cross dressing, as it was in the name of drama.

Fast forward to the New World, where the mummer tradition had taken more of a lay person role. Part of a 12 Days of Christmas celebration would be a mummer party usually hosted on the 12th night (on or about 17 January by the Julian Calendar). People would dress in gaudy outfits and meet at the house of a friend, who would attempt to guess the identity of each of the guests of the party. As such, deception was highly valued, and dressing as the oposite gender was an effective method of hiding one's identity. Women were now involved, and they would frequently dress as men. Once again, nothing sexual.

It appeared that my intended argument had fallen flat. Cross dressing was indeed a part of the mummer legacy, and there was indeed nothing sexual or impure about it. Granted, I still can't stand the Mummer's Parade, and think it is a silly tradition, but it is more faithful to it's roots than I gave it credit for.

For more reading.

The official Mummers Parade website: http://www.phillymummers.com/

An overview of the history of mummering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummers_Play

I would love to talk some late Roman politics and practice with you, Steve. Do it!

Well, the Mummer's thing is pretty cool. I had heard the word, but never bothered to look it up. Thanks for that.

So who's going to pick up the part of the topic that covers cross dressing? :hmm2:

Any takers? :smug:

I saw you...don't go looking at me like that :stare:

I had major problems fitting into the wifes dress last night :oops:

Get away from me! :stare:

*Pulls a Tazer and slowly backs up*

:rotfl2:

Did it make you cross?

My turn before the rowdies get into it further... :stare:

Topic, Psychology:

Perhaps the oldest and longest running debate in the field of psychology is that of nature versus nurture, or biology versus environment (personally I prefer these two terms as they are more precise). Originally in the early days of psychology, the argument was very polarized; the great minds of the day argued for one or for the other, with the attitude that people were born into the world either as tabula rasa (blank slate), or that everything we are we are born with (or later viewed as being contained in our genetic makeup). These views were eventually discarded for the more current understanding that both are true, that it is almost never entirely nurture or nature, but ratio of both. So now the argument revolves around how much is it nurture and how much is it nature, when examining aspects of the human mind, such as personality.

In clinical practice the biology vs environment question invariably comes up when working with mental illness. The consideration of biology vs environment strongly ties into treatment planning; drugs are not a whole lot of use if the person's problems are all environmental, and therapy may not be of much benefit if the person's problems are entirely biological (there are some major exceptions to this). The problem though, is that often times it is difficult to tell what the underlying cause is; is the person depressed because they have few social contacts, or are they depressed because of a chemical imbalance that made them more anti-social and isolative, which caused the person to loose most of their social contacts. Generally speaking the answer is that both biology and environment are playing a role, and both are interacting with and influencing each other. This is why in modern clinical practice, the standard approach is to provide both drugs and therapy together to treat mental illness.

The whole process gets even more convoluted when you factor in that in clinical practice it is very common that you are not dealing with one single mental illnesses (such as depression), but multiple illnesses (such as depression + anxiety) that are interacting with and influencing each other (and each having their own biology and environment factors).

Some light reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_...re_and_nurture

I think his wife was cross. He's got his own dresses.:O:

Breaking wind. :88)

My question would be, and it is something that I have wondered about for a long time, is the correlation between pre-natal genetics more powerful than the environmental factors in regards to severe and sudden mental illness? In other words, is there simply a switch that gets flipped in one's genes that say 'at 24, this individual will become schizophrenic', or are continued environmental stressors enough to push one towards it. I had come across students in my time in K-12 education that I thought may be future sufferers of the disorder, but do not pan out in that manner. Given the peculiarity of the onset of schizophrenia, is it possible to every truly know?

And he's got very good taste. :D

Oh Great! Tricked again!
It's New Years Day for Gosh Sakes!
And you tricked me into thinking.
Thanks to Tak and Neon?

My head now hurts by a power of 3.
:nope:

:salute:

I've asked myself a variation of that question more than once: Is it my parents' fault or my own? On the one hand I realized a long time ago that my foibles are my own, and trying to attribute my problems to someone else is even on a good day "shifting the blame". On the other hand an honest appraisal leads me to question whether they indeed had a hand in making me what I am. I think that part of rationality is asking yourself that very question. Why am I who I am today? What really happened? One can dwell on past mistakes in an attempt to understand why, but one also has to ask the question "Could I have really avoided those mistakes? Am I doomed to be who I am?"

Of course it's also easy to waste too much time worrying about things we have no control over. Then right back into the trap of "But do I really have no control?" It's enough do drive you crazy.