Popular dispute experiences from living in polar environments: can they give us useful information for future long-term manned space flights?
- Paper number
IAC-08.E5.I.6
- Author
Mr. Jesper Jørgensen, SpaceArch, Denmark
- Coauthor
Dr. Klaus Georg Hansen, Greenland
- Year
2008
- Abstract
Coming long-term manned space flights will challenge the human mind, both in reactions to the extreme environment and in living in confined social systems on board. There is therefore a need for research in both psychological reactions and possible countermeasures. We will analyze relevant human and cultural experiences in an analogue environment: the Inuit living in the polar region. People living in extreme environments as ex. in the polar region has an accumulated experience in surviving challenges caused by the extreme external environments: Several months in darkness, coldness and extreme winds, living most indoor on confined space in wintertime, living often in small settlements with very limited visits from outsiders. Both traditional and modern human life in Polar regions causes a number of psychological reactions to these environmental and social stressors. Too, the arctic life is a background for both development of different countermeasures against these stressors and serious pathological reactions in these populations. In both modern and traditional Inuit Cultures open conflicts in undesirable, and avoided, due to its social effect in the closed social system. Therefore the culture has developed an advanced system for dispute resolutions. This system contains of different elements depending on the grade of social control or not over the dispute, and by a wish to expel from, or contain within the individual of the dispute in the social system. By analyzing well-known and well-described human reactions in the Greenlandic culture we will try to conclude on these reactions and extract the psychological reactions inside the cultural and social meaning of these reactions in relation to other extreme environments as the coming long-term interplanetary human space missions. Some of the phenomenon discussed are ex.: Kayak dizziness: This is both a state of spatial confusion, probably physiological caused by a decrease in sensory inputs and reinforced in a social system of dispute resolution in a stressed social situation. Kayak dizziness, which can be fatal, is often seen in skilled sealers, with a long experience in kayak navigation. The phenomenon is discussed together with the traditional countermeasures against this condition in relation to ex. the possibility for sudden claustrophobic reactions in well-motivated and highly selected individuals in spaceflight. Other relevant elements, with somatic or mental representations, in this dispute resolution relevant for future missions are: the qivittoq system (mental withdrawal from the group), the making of the tupilak (anger management) and the Drum singing (lowering interpersonal tensions in the group)
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
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