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Two. Faces. One. Life. Ted sat in the park and immersed his thoughts into the bird's activities. A gentle sniff and a rustle of tissue paper startled him back to reality. 'Miracle' boy born with extremely rare condition that gave him 'two faces' was unlikely to survive at almost every stage of his life, The Sun reports. was adorable and shocking at the same time, one side of his face looked.
One of these systems responds to the abstract concept of dying, so that even subtle everyday reminders of death and dying prime the mind to ward off existential terror. This system tends to bolster our already existing beliefs, both religious and cultural, as a way of affirming life. The second system is vivid, concrete, and highly personal; it is primed not by subtle and abstract thoughts, but by actually coming face to face with death. When this system is primed into action—as the above scenario is meant to do—our very personal sense of mortality can lead us to reexamine our priorities in life, to become more grateful, and grow in spiritual ways.
So, shoring up beliefs—or reexamining them.
Which leads to a better life? The scientists ran an experiment to begin exploring this question. They recruited volunteers, ages 17 to 76, and primed them in different ways: Some answered open-ended questions about death, to remind them of their mortality in a general way, while others imagined they were trapped and dying in the burning apartment.
Others, the controls, thought about going to the dentist—unpleasant but not life-threatening. The scientists wanted to see who became more altruistic, and the findings were an interesting mix. Those primed in an abstract way were more generous than the controls—but only when the need was high. This suggests that they were reaffirming the societal expectation that it is good to give to the needy—but with no sweeping personal epiphany.
But those who were vividly primed by thoughts of their own death in flames were more generous even than those primed in a more subtle and abstract way. They were willing to give blood whether the need was high or low, suggesting a fundamental reexamination of values. Why would this difference occur? One possibility, the scientists write in the on-line version of the journal Psychological Science , is that our abstract existential system has no tolerance for the gory details of death, indeed that abstract thoughts of death generate an aversion to bodily fluids, including blood.
This aversion to blood is not strong enough to trump cultural expectation that we should help those in need—but it carefully metes out generosity to those truly in need. For those who have come close to perishing, blood is not something aversive, but the stuff of life. His book, On Second Thought , will soon be out in paperback. Or maybe the more vivid story just was far more scary, thus raising the perceived threat.
In response to that, people act in a self-sacrificial way, perhaps in hopes of purchasing a favour from fate! There is something spiritually lifting and serene when you realize how short and momentary things can be. Appreciating sets in and that good vibe is pushed out to our external world, be it friends, family, work, or simply our view of life.
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In the interest of transparency, we do not accept anonymous comments. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Not much is known about him, but his condition was described in the book Anomalies and curiosities of medicine , by George M. He never claimed the title, however, and committed suicide in his twenty-third year. He lived in complete seclusion, refusing the visits even of the members of his own family. He was a young man of fine attainments, a profound scholar, and a musician of rare ability.
His figure was remarkable for its grace, and his face — that is to say, his natural face — was that of an Antinous. It would be been seen to smile and sneer while Mordake was weeping. No imagination can conceive the dreadful temptations it sets before me.
For some unforgiven wickedness of my forefathers I am knit to this fiend — for a fiend it surely is. I beg and beseech you to crush it out of human semblance, even if I die for it. You can gather from this passage that Mordake lived a tortured life, as short as it was. You may also gather that there is some doubt about whether he truly did exist.
Given his extreme reclusion, it seems unlikely there would have been any pictures taken, at least with his consent. Mordake is apparently unique in having had a second face that was capable of expression and tears, and even, in his words, of whispering hate in the quiet hours of the morning. Some accounts tell of a man from around the same period as Mordake, known commonly as The Two-Headed Mexican. His real name was Pasqual Pinon, and he was said to have a second face protruding from his rather large forehead.
Pinon, though, was something of a fraud. He did have a large tumour growing on his head, likely caused by craniopagus paraciticus, but he was not actually diprosopus. His second face, however, was a wax mask created by the promoters to get a better bang for their buck. Almost all of the unfortunate souls who have been born with diprosopus have died shortly after birth, if they were not stillborn. A little girl named Lali Signh, born in Saini, Sunpura Sohanpur village near Delhi, in , survived for two months to the day after her difficult birth.
She had four eyes, two noses, two mouths, but only two ears. In that short time she was venerated by her village and by many around the world as a reincarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga who had three eyes , and even the legendary Ganesh. They had a single skull, but two full faces, two complete yet deformed brains, which were attached to a single brain stem, and they behaved as two distinct individuals.