User:MarcMyWords

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Contributions
Articles, etc. that I created.

Articles Created

 * Anthropology of art
 * Art destruction
 * Horizontalism
 * Junk art
 * Allison ‘Tootie’ Montana
 * Popular education
 * Popular assembly
 * Jonathan McIntosh

Portals Created

 * Portal:Anarchism

In the News
These are articles I successfully nominated and edited to be featured on the In the News section on the Wikipedia Homepage
 * Homo Naledi

Interests
I am currently interested in how psychology, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, media studies, communication_studies, history and similar academic fields can investigate and improve human behaviors. Details below:

Time Periods

 * Pre-history is perhaps the area of history that needs the most attention. It accounts for the vast majority of human existence, and offers insight into our evolution.
 * Ancient History can be used to understand how humans lived within our first civilizations. Many challenges we face today are quite similar to those documented thousands of years ago.
 * Islamic Golden Age is a significant period of scientific and cultural achievement that is often overlooked as part of the "dark ages" by Anglo and Western European cultures.

By Topic

 * Maritime history - particularly the development of sailing and navigation techniques prior to the Age of Discovery.
 * Polymath is a phenomenon less used today, but a hallmark of many of Western history's great thinkers. Also worth considering how different expressions of this are found in other cultures, such as the griot.

History of Science & Technology
The history of science and history of technology are both fascinating ways to track how human civilization, prosperity, trade, creativity, and innovation flourished in different conditions in vastly different geographic regions and societies. Throughout time, centers of learning have emerged:
 * Academy of Gundishapur

By Region

 * I'm particularly interested in the ancient history of the Mediterranean, particularly Phonecia and Ancient Carthage.

Future
Many look to history as a way to prepare for the future. In that regard, some interesting projects have been created to create artifacts that can outlast our own civilization:
 * Voyager Golden Record

Psychology
Most of my interests in psychology do not fall neatly within the traditional schools of thought and often intersect sociology, anthropology, gender studies, and other fields. However, social psychology is likely the most appropriate major school of thought to pursue these interests while evolutionary psychology and cultural psychology are less popular disciplines that I want to explore. My main interest is in social power (through direct forms like aggression / violence and indirect like dehumanization) and communication / creativity.

The Arts

 * Performance and celebrity status creates a unique psychological relationship between performer and observer

Mass Media & Journalism

 * One manifestation of privilege is in Media_bias and the growing psychological separation of journalists and other member of the media from the citizenry they are trying to communicate to and the "journalistic objectivity" they are sworn to.
 * The arts are a unique human form of behavior with potential for human wellness, yet also maladaptive health. This includes theatre (including cinema) as a forum for empathy and music as a coping strategy in music therapy.
 * Storytelling is a cornerstone human behavior, at the foundation of literature, theater arts and many other forms of expression and communication. Oral tradition has been the principal form in which we share knowledge, which most civilizations have only recently matured into written forms in recent centuries. Yet the technological rise and spread of writing, along with other forms of mass media and the information age, have overshadowed this.
 * Through cinema and television, theater has risen to become a form of mass media, alongside the internet as principal forms in which humans now consume information and learn.

Technology & Information

 * How do technology and emerging tools affect our psychological well-being? Are there mental conditions that are affected by technology in unique ways?
 * How is the brain's navigation function affected by the increased use of handheld GPS systems like smart phone mapping apps or video game mini-map HUD displays?

Culture
Behaviors and accepted social norms vary greatly among cultures and these can affect many forms of identity. To gain a broader understanding of psychological phenomenon, it's essential we examine the variance of this expression across members of our species.
 * Why / how does the Hollywood film industry so successfully sell movies to international audiences, even when the films don't gross well in the United States?

Gender
Gender is increasingly being studied, in no small part for the role of sexism in our social practices.
 * Men%27s_studies and the study of masculinity can help use solve behaviors than lead to this phenomenon. A very important question remains to be answered here: whether Sex_differences_in_psychology or culture are primarily responsible for this behavior.
 * Domestic violence and other forms of violence remain significant problems in American society. And a stark correlation is found between perpetrators of mass violence and being male. What interventions can be used to reduce this? This intersects with media in how men are told to behave and emotion in what effective strategies can be used to prevent or change behavior.
 * Equal standing and political power of women remains a contentious issue for men in many cultures across the globe. Some studies have chosen to explore men's perceptions of this inequality and the concept of feminism. Some societies have made remarkable strides toward achieving gender equality, such as political developments in Iceland and Tunisia.

Empathy, Guilt, Conflict, & Aggression
Psychology, can be used to aid conflict resolution in a variety of circumstances.
 * Mediation is the art of finding a voluntary agreement between multiple parties, while arbitration has the power to impose a settlement. This is one form of restorative justice.
 * Family therapy nurtures change and development within families and couples.
 * Dehumanization and Empathy barriers such as guilt (& collective guilt) defense mechanisms / maladaptive coping strategies / cognitive distortion. Psychopathy and autism spectrum that result in decreased empathy can be helpful for analysis in this area.
 * Objectification can cause a form of dehumanization, where the recipient is reduced to solely as an object of sexual gratification, for example.
 * Privilege (social inequality) is a pervasive global phenomenon, problematic in trying to solve, and particularly made difficult by one of its key symptoms: those who benefit from it engage in self deception and are unwilling to acknowledge it.
 * Guilt defense mechanisms, maladaptive coping strategies, and the cognitive distortion found in abusers are of particular interest when applied on a large scale with collective guilt, such as white_guilt in American culture. Historically, specific events have spawned large-scale instances of this, such as German_collective_guilt. The organized, conscious efforts around these events, whether focused on restitution or not, are notable, such as the Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_(South_Africa), the US Psychological_Warfare_Division and Information Control Division operations during the denazification of Germany. Past events can be potentially useful when trying to solve current large conflicts exhibiting privilege, such as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
 * Traditional_knowledge

Uptopias

 * Can Masdeu
 * Gaviotas
 * The Culture

To Do...
If you are looking for help within the realms of art, society, or culture, I might be interested. I enjoy creating new articles more than developing pre-existing ones. I am more inclined to work on an existing article if it doesn't already have lots of contributors.