Social Connections and Your Health

Alfred Anduze

• Publisher: Yorkshire Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781957262024
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: General Health

Social Connections and Your Health is a contemporary look at the origins, evolution, history, and science of human social life. In the text we look at where this behavior came from, where it is at present and where it maybe going. The biochemistry of socializing and the formation and management of social connections involving the presence and activity of feel-good hormones and feel-bad hormones vying for expression and based on genetics, environment, and oxidative stress are presented in terms of positive and negative effects. Pro-Social and antisocial behavior are discussed with emphasis on the influence of each on human interactions as well as on the mental and physical health of individuals and groups, with respect to their association with anxiety, depression, heart disease, dementias, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Friendships and hostilities, cooperation and conflicts are closely linked to longevity and quality of life. We see how anti-social behavior manifests itself in lack of basic manners, rudeness, snobbery, selfishness, us vs them exclusions and the concept of "others" and its resultant dysfunctional societies. Social experiences compare the effects of friendliness and indifference in shaping the character of a people within counties and regions. Protocols for building and improving social skills among the various age groups are suggested and provided. The effects of social distancing and isolation in the present Covid pandemic are examined and possible solutions to minimize the damages to mental and physical health are provided. Emphasis is placed throughout on the importance of socializing across diverse lines and the quality and quantity of social behavior and its close connections with good health. 

Chapter Three

Antisocial Behavior

Actions or conduct that harm or show inconsideration for the well-being of others makes up anti-social behavior. The first principle of all organisms is survival. Ancient hominids’ survival rates soared when being social and fell when being competitive and antisocial. Negative, reduced or lack of social interactions between humans gained favor in and between societies long before the present pandemic. Certain people just do not like other people, feel they are a threat and have no problem expressing their dislike or simply pretending the other does not exist. After settlements and the elevation of possessions to the highest level, greed and selfishness made headway in the human condition.

Humans are the nicest or nastiest of species / both social and antisocial.

Nobody adopts antisocial behavior unless they fear they will fail if they remain on the social side of life. Alfred Adler

Being antisocial can also mean that you’re aware of how annoying it is to be social. Dov Davidoff

“If you don’t go to someone’s funeral, they won’t come to yours.” Yogi Berra…

Humans are naturally social. It is civilization that causes us to be antisocial. Kirk D. Sinclair

You might be an introvert if you were ready to go home before you left the house. Criss Jami

Diversity is a key feature of Nature. Those who follow natural patterns should be successful. Those who defy should fail. Nature has a duality, and humans display the classic capacity to create and to destroy, often at the same time. Kind and cruel DNA gives us good and evil within the same genome. The initial social behavior that gave success in the advent, gave way to the antisocial behavior of modern times.

Movement is a feature of human nature. It leads to migration, travel and intermingling, and socializing, which were major reasons for our success. Around 10,000 years ago, when humans began to settle down, grow their food and choose material possessions over humanity as a main purpose for existing, antisocial behavior emerged as a major factor in the determination of human history. Interactions and connections carried a different influence.

“Islands were dangerous places. You met monsters as often as friends.” Circe, the prophetess

We were going along quite fine as “social animals”. Compassion was an instinctive behavior sourced in infancy between mother and child, and extended to kin and friends. So when did the heartlessness arrive? It too is an innate, early defense mechanism sourced as an aversion to pain. But avoidance and disdain for other humans is manufactured and then leads to antisocial behavior. The child learns to hate. Both social and antisocial behavior are DNA derived, abuse and counter- abuse, love and hatred, the duality of Human Nature. The infant is born social and the child chooses to be antisocial.

The Paleolithic hunter-gathers were social, capitalizing on kind DNA to promote cooperation for protection and essential survival skills. Upon encountering others, they interacted, assimilated, and formed social networks that benefitted whole groups.

About 10,000 years ago, the Neolithic nomads decided to settle down, grow their own food in one place and collect materials. These became possessions, land, food storage and valuables. This started the concepts of “mine” and “get more” and “belonging”, which needed even more protection particularly against strangers who would take them. The hunter-gatherers’ innate social kind DNA and cooperation included the settlers’ antisocial, cruel DNA expressed as fear and reactive aggression.

Aggressors welcome tough leaders to confer feelings of security. (“Build that wall!”) With the accumulation of possessions, the hospitality of the nomads led to reduced interactions, xenophobia, and reduced sharing. Bonding rose to ensure the numbers needed for success at making war. We started as social cave dwellers and became antisocial hierarchal Homo sapiens in modern times. Nature provided hunter-gatherers with time and incentive to socialize, settlers worked to produce and took time to store and hoard, and socializing lost much of its importance. Paleolithic people observed all six strategies of good health, movement, diverse diet, low stress, low exposure to toxins, mental stimulation in creativity and interactions, and healthy social life. Neolithic people had a limited diet, less movement, high stress, exposure to animal diseases and a segregated social life. For the nomads, the friendliest survived while for the settlers, the cruelest hoarders flourished. They kept the toughest as rulers, and war became the instrument of success. (Support for the meanness and cruelty towards others generated by the administration of Donald Trump between 2015 and 2020, actually increased as the “normal” in the USA.)

Anti-socials replaced people with things, conjured up as “others”, those with whom they had little or no contact, and toward which there was great fear and animosity, and developed a military solution to everything. The expression of DNA depends on circumstances, as in the response to fear and threat and a desire for dominance and greed.

“In all cities, it is easier to hurt a man than to help him.” Plato

The reasons for antisocial behavior range from inherent shyness to deep cruelty. The primary driving force remains the survival of the group (individual) with procreation, reproduction and extension of the family line at the forefront. The individual need and capacity to socialize moves down in importance as a useful instrument. The natural DNA wiring expands to include antisocial behavior, which highlights differences over similarities.

“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” George Orwell

Vignette #18: Onlookers at a whipping or lynching of a black cheered with each lash, hurled epithets at the slumping body, then applauded the broken neck. Cruel behavior was common and acceptable well into the 20th century. “So it is the fear, weakness, selfishness, and cowardice of onlookers that permit evil behavior to persist.” Laura Schlessinger

And descendants of these same onlookers recently gathered at rallies and screamed “lock her up” and “send them back” with the same fervor and malice of intent. Is it coincidence or predictable results of the antisocial dictum, “Us vs Them”? Can there ever be any genuine equality and social interaction between us and them? When abhorrence and hatred are the main emotions elicited from one human being toward another because of their differences (social status, history, skin color), there can be no social interactions and certainly no connections. Social health suffers when one group shuns and inflicts cruelties upon another.

Vignette #19: The Erik the Red Sagas on the encounters of the Norse with the Native Amerinds in North America, emphasize heroism and ingenuity of the voyagers and highlight the “differences” of the natives. This is a clear incidence of Us versus Them. In the first encounter, Thorvald, brother of Leif Erikson, immediately and without hesitation, killed 8 of the 9 people he met. The 9th escaped, returned with reinforcements and did away with Mr. Thorvald. It was not until years later that Thorfinn Karlsefni and his crew met and traded with the natives. And still the Sagas highlighted the differences not the similarities.

Materialism breeds privileges that generate inequality as the fuel for antisocial behavior. To be effective, social interaction must be repressed, social environment reduced and social feelings rendered insignificant. This increases self-satisfaction and removes any guilt from proprietary gain. As the concept gains popularity, pro-social behavior that is no longer needed is easily replaced by anti-social behavior, which takes less effort and provides a greater reward. Anti-social behavior got results and enhanced survival. It is rare that the wealthy got their wealth by playing fair. All had and made use of advantages in access and opportunity. Then they oppress and suppress the less fortunate to maintain that advantage and pass it on to their heirs. Normal people do not go around destroying other people, unless it is for material and egotistical gain. How one treats those who can do nothing for them, shows what genuine character is all about. We often find antisocial people lacking in real character.

The human capacity for making friends is the same as for making enemies. Kindness, compassion, competition, animosity, dislike, bullying, and negativity have roughly the same values. The key is to recognize and distinguish between the two.

“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

In the modern world, we forge some friendships for gain as in what can you do for me, and not for meaningful relationships, as in I’m doing this because I really like you and want to help. Socializing relies on trust and cooperation to bind us together and motivate us to depend on one another for survival, In “modern times”, the need for reliability for survival is no longer valid. We have replaced it with self-interest. Anti-social behavior is highlighted by the severe level of distrust and breakdown of the social structure into tribes based on class, skin color and nationality. African Americans and European Americans living in the same area speak differently. They hardly speak to each other and socializing together is at a minimum. They live in different worlds. There are two different Americas. When one group tries to exclude the other group as “not belonging”, antagonism arises, heading towards a tribal war.

Refusing to socialize, interact, or share space with fellow human beings is severely compromising to one’s health. Social anxiety and pain of isolation are real and detrimental to emotional and physical health. Both sides suffer. The social brain is wired to make and keep social connections, such as with the mother-infant- family-group. A high level of social pain results when we threaten to remove these relationships. Both sides live in constant fear, resentment, anger and anxiety, with cortisol levels on constantly high stress alert.

The United States was less social in 2019 than in 1985. Antisocial behavior in the form of gang attitude, demonization of others, hostility and aggression, blatant cheating and outright theft is an integral part of societal behavior. When the population glorifies a celebrity who only backs winners and ridicules losers, we accept anti-social behavior as the normal. We no longer exile the alpha male for the good of the community, we elect him to lead.

Antisocial behavior is fueled by and causes more antisocial behavior. Working a job you do not love, daily stress (excess cortisol) building tension and abusive habits and feeling forced to interact with people for whom you care little, all provide damage to body and mind. Undervalue and under-appreciation produces adverse hormonal changes and directly affects the cardiovascular system to influence blood flow, perfusion of tissues and quality of blood. The anti-social person feels unworthy, struggles to interact, fears connecting and comes up short in achievement. Once failing at happiness is established, reactions turn to jealousy, anger, fear of change, loss of control, blaming, and bad choices.

Currently, we appear to be going backwards, with loss of communication and storytelling skills, ignorance of cultural histories and geography (especially our own), loss of appreciation and creation of the arts, of connections between each other and with nature. Anti-social behavior is fueling denial of climate change, abuses of energy sources, environmental waste, poor health delivery systems, where material profits supersede the welfare of the planet. This rise in meanness and selfishness is damaging to all of us.

When bacteria starve, they direct mutations to another state. Will we do the same, change, or stay the same course?

Science of Social Anxiety

The primary cause of antisocial behavior, the trigger mechanism that turns on the cruel DNA, is lack of contact, which generates fear. When I walk past you, make eye contact, smile and nod a greeting and you turn away and act like I do not exist, that is antisocial behavior, pure and simple. This behavior damages your health (and perhaps mine, depending on my reaction). It releases bad hormones within your system. Upon seeing me, your choice to ignore me and reject a simple encounter denies my identity in your mind. This rejection is subconsciously harming yourself.

Your cortisol levels burst upwards as you get a sense of dread and fear. Your pretense that I do not exist is not healthy. You shall have no social peace if you refuse to acknowledge my presence or existence. In the same way you ignore the homeless or the destitute, pretending they do not exist, or you give them some change but refuse to look them in the eye. The energy used in disgust and hatred promotes poor health. At a higher level, that of indifference, consciously ignoring someone i...