Hm. I was a corporate kid whose family was transferred globally every
three years. I came back to the US to go to college (did not do the
Junior Year Abroad option) stayed in that same town for 8 years after
graduating, then began to move again; around the US this time, every
year or two, sometimes more often. New Mexico is the longest I've been
anywhere. I do get restless and travel often, in the US and EU. I have
noticed that every year or two, if I do not move, I rearrange the
furniture and rooms in my house, often quite dramatically. I have
always wondered at my now-ingrained need to uproot familiar
circumstances after a couple of years, and derive it directly from
what I perceived as benefits to leaving everything and starting anew.
Feels strongly psychological to me. I feel like a shark who needs to
keep swimming or I will suffocate. My one sibling, also female, does
not have this.
Re traveling / wealth / tolerance and bigotry: I do not believe this
one is a direct correlation. The willingness to take in new ideas is
exacerbated by travel experiences, but not limited to them. Reading
has given me as much desire to understand and tolerate as seeing very
diverse cultures all satisfied with their adaptations. And there
certainly are bigoted, close-minded people whose travel is wide-
ranging yet which is used to confirm their own sense of superiority.
Another element entering into the discussion for us here is the aging
parent phenomenon: people of either gender, or couples, who move near
the parental orbit to take care of them, not necessarily because they
would choose to live there otherwise. More and more of that. WIth two-
income families the norm as well, not an issue in primates, proximity
to family that one can trust to care for the kiddies is a requirement
for many.
Victoria
On Aug 9, 2011, at 8:03 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote:
Glen,
Excellent observation at the end. I don't know much about the human
data (is there an anthropologist in the house?), but for every non-
human primate species I know of, and most other mammals, either
males disperse from their childhood groups, or females disperse. To
have members of both sexes routinely leaving their place of birth is
very rare. Also worth noting, male dispersal is much more typical.
Such dispersion tends to happen around puberty, and is surrounded by
much within group conflict (any parents of teenage children reading
this?).
There is quite a lot of modeling / theory / investigation as to the
social and environmental factors that determine which sex will
disperse. Good stuff. There is little experimentation though, so I
suspect that underlying the stability is a very stable environment,
rather than an extremely robust behavioral system. Either way,
humans show more flexibility 'in the wild' than other primate
species with regard to similar traits. With that in mind, I would
bet one could identify a set of factors that determine the
likelihood a given man or woman will want to move around a lot. It
is likely that if one did so, that environmental factors in
childhood would be better predictors of dispersal than current
environmental conditions. Put another way: It is reasonable to
presume that some childhood environments lead to men who want to
move a lot, and different environmental factors that lead to women
who want to move a lot.
Eric
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 08:41 PM, "glen e. p. ropella" <g...@tempusdictum.com
> wrote:
John Sadd wrote circa 11-08-09 12:22 PM:
> 1. Monetary union without true mobility is not feasible (more
specific
> than "just" political union). If things get bad in Nevada,
people can
> move elsewhere to look for jobs. If things get bad in Greece, it's
not
> realistic to expect Greeks to move to and get jobs in Germany.
Just thinking out loud, here:
I've had several discussions with the "sustainability" folks here in
the
PDX area and those discussions often seem to boil down to cheap
energy.
Where (and to whom) energy is cheap, all sorts of things seem to
happen
transparently (finding blueberries grown in South America at your
local
Safeway, for example, when they grow quite well right here). I think
the same kernel might be hiding underneath the mobility part of the
argument.
In a similar vein, I've often heard that people who travel a lot are
more tolerant/aware of various customs and may take a more "liberal"
view of how others choose to live their lives. Again, if energy is
expensive, then only the rich will travel a lot, perhaps implying that
those of us with fewer resources will tend to be more bigoted,
xenophobic, or (at least) ignorant.
Finally, I've also noticed that some people (e.g. me) like to move
around a lot and live in different (albeit not that different) places,
whereas others (e.g. my S.O. and most of her family) prefer to live in
close proximity to their family or where they were born. And it seems
to be that way regardless of the resources they have available. So, I
can't help thinking there's also a biological basis for (lack of)
mobility as well as an economic one.
--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com
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Eric Charles
Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
