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| Billy Idol and his trademark sneer |
In this episode of Mark, Sarah, and James discuss Chapter XI from Darwin's text The Expression and Emotions in Man and Animals, 3rd edition. Sarah noted that this chapter was a potpourri of emotions, including: Scorn, Disdain, Contempt, Disgust, Jealousy, Envy, Avarice, Revenge, Suspicion, Deceit, Slyness, Guilt, Vanity, Conceit, Ambition, Pride, Humility, Helplessness, Impotence, Affirmation, *heavy sigh*...and Disapproval.
Darwin's use of images in this chapter, to James, were not too convincing. Here is plate 1 in this chapter. Looks more like a silent film serial actor than a real expression of contempt.
We compared the role of classic sneer expression in the modern place and how it has morphed into more subtle expressions or verbal components. James brought up the common expression Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave as one of the many press secretaries in the previous presidential administration. Her expression seemed to be a chimera of emotions- Contempt + Disdain + a dash of the two '-ceits'.
Notice that her clothes are different in each image, she employed this expression frequently.
Mark explored the notion of disgust and explained how Darwin's narrowly applied use of disgust, an emotion associated only with tainted food, has now been expanded to include how we feel about social interactions and how the feeling of disgust may be the foundation of moral rules. We briefly mentioned the work of Jonathan Haidt and colleagues on this intriguing relationship between our concepts of disgust and how they relate to our ideas of moral rights and wrongs. If you want to see how you fair on the disgust scale visit this Yourmorals.org and take some of the questionnaires. Fascinating stuff.
We closed talking about the potpourri of emotions discussed in the end of the chapter and how the shrug, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and nodding yes in the affirmative and shaking your head no in the negative are not as universal as one would think, or Darwin would hope.
The opening and closing theme to Discovering Darwin is "May" by Jared C. Balogh.
Interlude music, as requested by Sarah, is Bloodhound Gang, Bad Touch
Intriguing episode! Particularly interesting is the idea of disgust being allocated a meaning with a cultural relevancy, beyond that of its original association with gustatory circumstances. Well done, all!
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