An Overview
I thought this section was very informative because it pertains to what I have been learning in class. It mentions the jest of the main principles of traffic psychology and gives a precise definition of what it entails.
Traffic psychology refers to the knowledge one acquires about how to use behavioral principles to modify one's own style of conduct in traffic situations including driving, bicycling, walking, and other forms of locomotion in shared spaces. A common activity in traffic psychology is to attempt to modify one's old driving persona to a new and better driving persona. The more you become an expert traffic psychologist the more thoroughly you can alter your traffic personality.
Now here is a very informative section. It deals with the where and when traffic psychology originated. It discusses the principle behind road rage. Note the estimated 50,000 car related deaths every year--a very scary fact.
Traffic Psychology evolved out of the Generational Curriculumarchives. Starting in 1980, many of my students at the University of Hawaii created self-witnessing lab reports on their own driving behavior by making tape recordings of their thoughts and feelings as they drove in traffic. Subsequent generations of students studying social psychology and personality theory, used these generational reports to study other people's experiences in their self-modification attempts at becoming better traffic users. For a review, see an article I wrote on the private World of the driver -- feelings, thoughts, and actions.
(1) Driving has become intolerably stressful, dangerous, demeaning. For instance: about 50,000 (fifty-thousand) deaths every year and about 3,000,000 (three million) injuries every year, year after year. As well, drivers are stressed out, threaten each other, are in a bad mood, terrorize their passengers, and often fantasize violent acts against each other. This shows there is a strong need for traffic psychology which can reverse this trend and alter our driving styles.
Why is it so important to take traffic psychology into consideration? Because it helps us to become better, rational and humane drivers. Below are the benefits included in traffic psychology. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone thought about them while driving?
(2) The benefits of traffic psychology include the following:
I found this to be quite fascinating because it dealt with a certain kind of power that embodies the universe. If you ever read "The Celestine Prophecy" or "The Tenth Insight," then Swedenborg should impress you as well.
His physics and astronomy, his chemistry and algebra, his anatomy and psychology, are all written from a consistent dualist position. He never fails to follow these two cardinal empirical principles:
The first principle says that natural events such as the formation of planets or, getting sick from a virus, are consequences of spiritual events. The second principle says that there must be a spiritual world, as counterpart to the natural world in order for cause-effect relations to exist between spiritual events and natural events. The third principle says that scientific theories must be rational, in addition to being empirical, so that scientific explanations should not have unexplained gaps.
These principles show Swedenborg's empiricism and honesty. He was not content to merely make affirmations that spiritual forces can influence natural events. His physics and astronomy have no gaps, just as his physiology and neurology. His scientific dualism is complete and total, empirical and rational, spiritual and natural. Substances emanate from the Divine -- Swedenborg describes the spiritual elements as Divine Good and Divine Truth -- and by a process of externalization, transform themselves in to "atmospheres" or substances of various degrees of condensation of spiritual matter, until visible as ether or gravity, and then further as atomic particles. Within this chain of events is the human race for whose sake or purpose, all the rest is. Every person is born a dual citizen, with a physical body in which lives and grows a mental or spiritual body called spirit or mind. Human growth is described in minute detail, including thinking and feeling, and the various personality struggles, their eti ology and character being determined by spiritual events relating to each person's biography.
Swedenborg is the scientist's scientist! In unique and amazingly consistent and elegant accounts, he outlines the forces that create crystals in the matrix of the earth as well as the forces of heredity that create character weaknesses or strengths in individuals. You can see from this brief description that there is no place for Swedenborg's writings in 20th century science. But in my view, a new dualist paradigm is now being born in science so that the 21st century, only 1200 days away at the time of this writing, will not end before science will have established itself firmly in dualism.
Mr. Takitani discusses his initial reactions about Psy 459. I could relate to his insight concerning computers and all that they entail. However, I guess it was much more complicated then, than it is now--my how times have changed! I choose Mr. Takitani's report because I wanted to compare and contrast the 'then and now' evolution of Professor James' report assignments..... there was some quite interesting findings and some humorous yet informative anecdotes from Mr. Takitani as well.