snake & monkey

To my way of thinking, the snake's main activity is to be
apprehensive. There are a variety of "good" reasons to
be apprehensive, and probably a variety of not so good
reasons as well.  What I notice is that there's a very
"embodied" or even "yogic" aspect of this.  Movement, talking
with people, breathing all tend to counteract the apprehension.
But much, much, more so -- a sense of accomplishment tends
to make the snake happy,  whereas a sense of failure puts it into
a mode of embroiled frustration.

The snake often sends messages that the monkey doesn't know
what to do with.  It's not clear to me whether it's more apprehensive
about the monkey's potential behavior or about the
situation as a whole.  One way the opposition can be fake is
if the snake says to the monkey: "look at this horrible situation
you've gotten us into."

Well, just because the monkey has a wider range of
activities and proclivities and so on doesn't mean that
it should always take the blame when things go wrong.
The snake seems to think so and wishes to absolve
itself of all blame.  But clearly an apprehension engine
like the snake DOES contribute to bringing things about
(even if its main contribution is to put on the brakes).

I don't think either one is going away (since both
presumably correspond to real brain structures and
not just temporary habits), so I'm guessing the
challenge I face (and presumably at least some
other people are challenged by the same thing) --
is how to make them both happy.

For example, putting in some effort to teach the
monkey to feed and care for the snake, while
also teaching it how to avoid getting bitten or
hissed at a lot.

Going a bit further with this:

Saying things like "trust your intuition!" may really
over simplify matters, if there's a snake-intuition
and a monkey-intuition, for example, and they
*are* in conflict.  And saying "humans are social
animals" is another over simplification, insofar
as humans do have hereditary origins among
much "less social" animals who are still somehow
"social".

http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Parental_Care.html

I don't think I understand where self-criticism
comes from (on the one hand) any better than I
understand where language comes from (on the
other).  Sometimes feeling better is as simple
as having a cup of coffee... potentially both very
social and at the same time, a "mere" matter of
neurochemical doctoring.  Similarly, sometimes
we have the strongest self-criticisms in social
situations -- other times it seems more a matter
of getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

The interplay of animal meanings (e.g. sex)
and human meanings (e.g. partnership) is
hard to understand.  Society is more than
the sum of its brains.  If I've done an OK job
sketching a hypothetical brain's self-relations,
another interesting next step would be to look
at what happens when brains collide.  How
do the range of interpersonal experiences from
admiration to zealotry come about, and where
do they go to once they've arisen?