second-evolution_summaries1

THE SECOND EVOLUTION
BY DANNY VENDRAMINI

THE PRINCIPAL TEEM THEORY HYPOTHESES

Page 1 (of 3)

Although teem theory applies to all multicellular animals, when citing
examples, I’ve mostly used humans because most of us are interested
in how teems affect our own species.

1 The second evolution hypothesis

The ‘second evolution hypothesis’ argues that evolution on this planet is regulated by two separate evolutionary processes. In addition to natural selection which regulates physical evolution, (plus a small number of reflex behaviours), a second process emerged about 540 million years ago (which I call ‘teemosis’) to regulate innate behaviour and instincts in multicellular animals.

2 The teemosis evolutionary process

As an evolutionary process, teemosis is unusual because it doesn't affect physical characteristics. In fact, it only regulates the evolution of one thing – emotion, and only in multicellular animals. Significantly though, emotion can function as a biological language that can encode adaptive experiential information into DNA where it can be inherited to the next generation.

The teemosis process allows powerful emotional responses (to singular environmental events and circumstances) to be genetically encoded into DNA. These archived emotions provide the individual with an ‘emotional memory’ which can be inherited to offspring Because this emotional memory is encoded by powerful, traumatic emotions, I call it a ‘teem’ (Trauma Encoded Emotional Memory.’)

3 The CNS seismograph hypothesis

This hypothesis argues that the central nervous system (CNS) rather than the brain is the real ‘emotion producing organ’ in animals. This theory sees the CNS as a kind of ‘organic seismograph’ that produces ‘patterned neuronal activity’ when stimulated by sensory stimuli from sensory receptors like eyes, ears and noses. This constant stream of patterned neuronal activity is what the organism experiences as emotion. Therefore, emotion is common to all animals with a CNS and sensory organs.

According to this model, the CNS is able to discriminate and interpret fluctuations in emotional activity so that transduced sensory stimuli forms a ‘emotional language.’

4 Transduction theory

Transduction theory describes the process whereby stimuli from sensory organs are translated, or more accurately ‘transduced’ into variable patterns of neuronal activity (or emotion) which the CNS linguistically recognizes and interprets.

This theory argues that every sensory precept generates a unique pattern of emotional activity so, for example, the emotion generated by our eyes when looking at a cat will be different from the emotion generated by a different cat, and the emotions will change depending on what the cat is doing. Emotional transduction is adaptive because it creates a rudimentary perceptual system that doesn't depend on a functioning brain to work.

This hypothesis tells us that every minute of every day, we are subliminally translating everything we see, hear, smell, touch and taste into an emotional language that only our CNS understands. The implications for human psychology are significant.

5 Seismographic pathology and human health

This hypothesis argues that prolonged over-stimulation of the CNS by ‘toxic’ transductions produces stress emotions that precipitate psychopathology, disease and premature death in humans. In other words, certain sights and sounds, when transduced, can produce such toxic emotions that they damage the CNS, in some cases, irreparably.

A new holistic view of human mental and emotional health will emerge from an understanding of emotional transduction and its impact on the CNS.

6 The dual perception hypothesis

This hypothesis argues that what psychologists call perception is actually a fusion of two radically different perceptual systems – both using the same sensory organs but processing sensory precepts in radically different ways. While the brain processes precepts into comprehensible, discernible images, sounds, smells, etc, the original archaic but never completely replaced ‘emotional perception system’ transduces images, sounds, smell etc into patterns of emotion from which our familiar emotions are constructed.

Human perception can only be understood in terms of a fusion between conscious or ‘cerebral’ precepts (processed and comprehend by the cortex) and subliminal emotional precepts generated directly by the CNS.

7 Teem theory of emotions and emotional memory

While the patterned emotional activity generated by the CNS in response to sensory stimuli usually subsides quite quickly, occasionally the emotion is so traumatic it disrupts homeostasis and releases stress hormones that genetically archive the traumatic emotions into the person’s DNA, creating a permanent genetic record of the powerful emotions. These emotions can be inherited and accessed by offspring providing them with an emotional memory of significant ancestral experiences.

According to this view, when we ‘feel’ an emotion, we are in fact ‘recalling’ an emotional memory of a specific real time event that an ancestor experienced. All our emotions are acquired in this way. For example, humans can feel the emotion of jealousy only because an archaic individual ancestor (possibly a hominid, but more likely a primate) genetically archived these particular feelings and the triggers that activate them into a ‘jealousy teem.’

Today, our myriad collection of jealousy teems accumulated over the eons provide us with the assortment of jealousy emotions’ ranging from mild envy to homicidal rage.

8 Teem theory of innate behaviour and instincts

While teems are simply packages (or quanta) of inherited emotion, when triggered, certain emotions can precipitate adaptive behaviours that do not need to be learnt. For example, the emotion of fear can precipitate defensive and escape behaviours. Similarly, the emotions released by a ‘romance teem’ will generate romantic behaviour, while emotions released by our ‘spider teem’ will usually precipitate anti-spider responses.

According to this hypothesis, all animal instincts and innate behaviour, including our own ‘human nature’ originated as individual teems, each one archived by an ancestral individual and selected for because it proved adaptive.

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