Relatively unconscious gestural communication like scratching an
ear
when you tell a lie or scratching an arm in the direction of the
person in power, is better described as communication along the
network composed of individual humans and the various symbiants
that share our social space,
fungal, bacterial, viral, and combined
structures.
Yawning is a similar activity that is relatively unconscious and
seems
socially and psychologically motivated, but probably involves some
kind of symbiotic structure, although I find it harder to imagine
what
it is.
I have seen videos of a group of lions all yawning simultaneously as
they
veer away from a "chicken" fight with a group of wildaeasts; and I
have regularly experienced yawns in human social
situations that closely estimate the lion situation, when a
challenge
is backed away from. I have a pretty rich experience myself with
yawns as I almost
invariably trigger yawns in about 80 percent of other people.
I have also noticed in my own experience that the line of sight
between my gaze and the yawners throat, even through a covering
hand with "casually" splayed fingers, seems to be very important
to
the transaction in that it always plays a part and I have observed
subtle negotiative behavior around this micro second experience.
This visual aspect to it has made me wonder if the symbiant
ecosystems that use our yawns to move energy around rely more
on
light than than ones do that use our scratches. The scratch
phenomena is a quick sharp physical feeling that could be
triggered
by a long fungal cord that might also float in the air as well as
something within our own nervous system, whereas the visual
connection between the darkness of the throat and the eye seems
like it would have to be internal to our nervous system and light-
related.
It has occurred to me that yawns present a lot of darkness from
the
throat in contrast to light shining off the face but without the
brightness of the teeth which would signal danger. This could
mean
that the subject is actually just bored with me and that all of this
other stuff about symbiants is just crap.
Anyway, on to the idea.
This is kind of a combination of Rap Genius and YouDescribe: an
annotation space for videos only of yawns, and a capacity for
crunching the results. So this would allow psychology students
from
all over the world to collectively annotate yawn videos and
correlate
other psychological occurrences like body language, scratching,
eye
contact etc. and the best descriptions or simplest descriptions
that
connected the most events would rise to the top.