An amazing article here that walks you through what it was like at Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th, 1941:
A Navy veteran-turned-civilian machinist at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard had “the unusual presence of mind” to sound the air raid alarm 75 years ago, never thinking he was witnessing one of the most cataclysmic events in history…
The first wave of Japanese carrier-based aircraft began to cross Oahu’s western coast at approximately 0740. They began their attack on U.S. Pacific Fleet ships and installations at Pearl Harbor several minutes before 0800, shattering what had been a quiet Sunday morning…
Rudy’s initial thought was that a large fire was raging out of control and that aircraft were being used to drop fire-retardant chemicals to suppress the flames, which had been practiced at the base during a recent exercise. “The fire must be too hot, and they’re dropping chemicals from the air,” he told a man next to him. Rudy alerted another watch engineer to monitor pressure in the fire mains controlled by the plant’s large saltwater pumps. He quickly realized, however, that what was transpiring was something entirely different from an exercise—and far worse…
As Rudy’s daughter, Carol, recalled, “December 7th is vivid in my mind. Grammie [Rudy’s mother, Irma] and I were outside hanging up washing on the clothesline. We heard whizzing noises. Our neighbor came over on the run, told us Pearl Harbor was being bombed, and said to get inside our house. We could see smoke rising in the distance from Pearl Harbor…”
After her mother-in-law and daughter ran into the house, Viola was shocked by their description of the attack and reports that ships were being sunk at Pearl Harbor. “I was dumbfounded that such a thing could happen,” she said. “Looking out the window I could see smoke billowing up from Pearl Harbor. I knew that what she had told me was true, but still felt that it couldn’t be…”
Daddy was shaking. I could see bullet holes in the fender. He was dumbfounded the Japanese could penetrate our defenses. Having served in the Navy, he had implicit faith in the ability of our men to protect us. He had a great deal of confidence in the Navy, so it took a while before he realized what was happening…”
Life was never the same in Hawaii during the war years following the attack.
You can see what a violation of expectation adds to an amygdala hijack, and how it affects amygdala activity. The whole piece is very reminiscent of the cognitive effects of the 9/11 attacks, which included a similar violation of expectation.
If you know your defenses are weak, if you know the hit is coming, there is a limitation to the amygdala activity it will precipitate when it goes down. If periodically we knew the Japs were going to bomb our harbor, and suddenly it began happening, it is one thing. You recognize what is coming when it starts. You know what to expect. You know what you need to do, and focusing on it occupies your amygdala, calming it. It isn’t pleasant, but you cope as you execute what needs to be done.
But the article captures what the element of disbelief adds to the hijack. You can feel the spacey, disoriented feeling. You can feel the way your mind would bounce from one option of action to another, as you try to figure how best to contribute to the response on the fly. You can feel how that would amp up the amygdala and the feelings of agitation as the brain bounces frantically between different ideas – and the way the brain could begin flying out of control if that wasn’t controlled.
The thing is that this effect doesn’t require Jap fighters bombing your position out of the blue. The pathways work on a variety of similar stimuli, many of much less significance, if similar in cognitive nature. Trigger the amygdala, and do it with something that the individual is surprised by, and you can use this effect in civilized interpersonal interactions to manipulate cognition, and trigger the amygdala-addled neurotics ever more forcefully.
[…] Pearl Harbor, Violations Of Expectation, And Amygdala Activation […]
“…and trigger the amygdala-addled neurotics ever more forcefully.”
AC: Neurotics? It seems to me that people become neurotic from a childhood spent in an unstable environment, and often, or always, under the authority of capricious narcissists.
The “safe-space” crowd of romantic zombie millennials would appear to be products of an environment which had too few stressors – a marshmallow world – and who are the opposite of neurotic, but who can be “triggered” easily by any information that conflicts with their marshmallow reality. As a Gen-Xer, I have long felt that the main problem with Boomers was the complete lack of challenges (free resources) in their lives growing up and into their adult years, i.e. they faced no crucible which would have hardened them to reality, and they have passed that on to their own offspring (that which was not aborted of course). Thoughts?
I agree, with a but. I think there may be two ways to produce neurosis. Being under a narcissist may be one. From what I have seen, that person goes one of two ways, either they are trained to trigger by the narcissist and go crazy, or they go stoic as a defensive mechanism and nothing can get through to them.
But the other way to get a triggerable neurotic is to leave them conditioned to always get everything they want, with no resistance. I thing the triggly puff phenomenon comes from too much dopamine, and no acclimatization to hardship.
Way back Brittany Spears went crazy. Things I picked up here and there about her behavior at the time were, she described being euphoric when she was on stage and the center of attention. She had way more money than a normal person could spend and stay sane, and she spent it. She was banging guys left and right. And she would put a full one pound Hersey bar in the microwave for twenty seconds, pull it out, and use a spoon to eat the whole melted mess in one sitting.
I am not sure that much dopamine wouldn’t leave me a total head case. I don’t think the average teenaged girl would stand a chance. Interestingly, in Chinese medicine, extreme pleasure is said to disrupt the heart’s ability to contain the shen, or spirit. When that happens, the shen becomes uncontrollable, and that manifests as insanity. I’d tend to think that until she experienced real hardship from her insanity, she had no chance of coming down, even with drugs and counseling.
Just some random thoughts on the subject.
I still see a distinction between Triggly and the neurotic ‘trained’ to be that way by a narcissist. The neurotic is on edge because of the sheer caprice of the early environment and is always concerned (on edge, heightened amygdala), to the point of over-stressing, about repeats of earlier stressors.
In contrast, do the marshmallows (i.e. Triggly), who have had no such negative stressors, even see the triggers coming? Isn’t Triggly losing it because she can’t process any information at all that challenges the narrow marshmallow existence she has lived (i.e. this is an entirely new phenomenon to her)?
Roosevelt and the whole high command were so amygdala-hijacked that when the Japs attacked Guam ten hours later, they once again achieved total surprise.
Roosevelt and Obama greatly weakened our military to pay for socialism at home. Obama further crippled their combat effectiveness by imposing feminism and diversity. If you enlist today, you’re signing up for the next Bataan Death March. Let the gays, trannies, dykes, barrack whores, Blacks, Latinos, and Muslims have that honor.
And if you’re ever on an extended deployment, your wife will fuck other men and then divorce-rape you when you get home; this happens all the time. A country that allows such outrages is not worth fighting for.