Month: September 2019

The 2/35 Ladies of Rainy Days

Jeff/neighsayer2 Comments

It sounded real good at the time, the fix that was actually possible. Also, collectivist, egalitarian, all that great stuff that looked popular back then, and all of this good stuff over and above the joke, which, the second meaning, well, I never found it easy to argue with that either! It seemed pretty airtight.

Of course everybody must get stoned!

All my life, I figured, cantankerous as he may be, Bob was on my side with that one. But I have switched sides, or rather, I have found a line that separates me from the meme in that song. I’ve seen that Bob was on the usual side of some lines there after all. The cantankerous side, of course.

The fighting side.

The theory at the time, for me at least, was that some folks are getting off easy, that the rich and powerful aren’t taking their share of the stones, and, yes, in a sense, but no, and not ‘no’ in the sense that they’re not winning the game, only in the sense that no-one wins this game because they are unabused and happy. That, to use a popular expression these days, is not how any of this works.

Put yourself in Barron’s shoes, for instance.

The guy who insisted that Puerto Rico receive no help and gets no power, so that many brown coloured people die, three thousand or so, they are saying, that maybe the last thousand would have died anyway or something. Now imagine it is that guy who is telling you brush your teeth and go to bed, or else. That guy inspecting your report card.

Anybody jealous?

Not the point, at some point Barron grows up enough to be the problem and not the victim, and that is Donald, and I am not sympathetic to Donald, I’m just saying, everybody is already getting stoned and that is the human problem, not the adjectival solution. And I don’t mean to single out the Trumps. Your dad’s plant explodes, killing half the town and he walks, your parents have half a million employees all in poverty on minimum wage and part time work, and he thinks you had better eat the damned carrots . . . this is the same conversation I have about the origins of “morality.” The in-group is already getting stoned, in-group prosocial behaviour is a measured dose of abuse – well, measured when in public, anyway.

Again, not a bid for sympathy, this is not “leave the rich alone, they’re suffering too,” this is “they are not the evil parasites they are because someone loved them too much and didn’t beat them enough.” Again, not how any of this life stuff works. Bob put his finger on it, though! Voiced the unconscious directive all humans are instilled with deeply, and by force, early in life: everybody must get hurt!

 

Bob never gave a damn about the revolution, did he? I kid, I’m sure he did, he’s just sort of emotional, and well, it’s feelings troubadours sell, isn’t it, and I understand the feeling in that song, as I said, no doubt.

We need better feelings is all.

The revolution always fails immediately when the new boss and the old boss agree, though, that violence is any sort of solution and they only disagree about to whom it is to be applied.

 

Jeff

October 1st., 2019

The Sunny Side of Life

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

It’s waiting for us.

It’s out there, the utopia, Jesus’ heaven on Earth, a better way.

Enough of us seem to think so, that it seems we have a gene for that, to use a twentieth century expression, for thinking so, at least. Questions abound, always, what does this statement of biology indicate? That we think it can exist – or the other part, that we think it exists “out there,” forever? Is that idea, it’s out there, a condition or an ingredient for something, the main reaction itself, or the by-product, the residue of some other interaction?

If it’s the first thing, a beginning, or a place to start, what brain process is it working to enable, that is perhaps not quite happening? If it’s the last thing, well, wishing for a better place, that is the residue of abuse. What was the middle thing again? Oh, God forbid. If that is the function itself, just to have the thought and then get back to work, just a happy fantasy, provided by your genetics to balance out the apparent failings of this world here . . . if that’s all it is? Wait, “all?” What am I saying?

Sigh. Well then, I guess I’m happy to have it, aren’t I? Aren’t you?

Thank Darwin! How hard would life suck without that? Eesh!

Tease me, please! All the mercies are not small. Hope, built-in with your DNA is no small thing, and give it up at your peril! The road to Why Bother is littered with the most miserable of corpses. I’ve always tried to prepare myself, always tried to be open to the idea that it’s possible that there is no better way, or that we’ll never find it if there is, but I am not “open” to knowing that for sure!

What’s the point in that?

I, were I your intelligent designer, have just worked out that you need this possibility in your programming, and I would not cut that corner: that’s yours, you keep that. I’m keeping mine, is the point, it’s one of my sacred cows, a premise for me.

If it’s not the case, well, science requires proving the obvious too. There’s still value in it. If it’s silly and we would be further ahead to grant the point and do the serious work of care and treatment in this nasty old world, well, I don’t think I’m taking a lot of people away from that, and anyway, you can still think this and do that. But granted, someone else is going to have to do any thinking involved in that, I’m off on this other thing.

But the dream is not the end, take heart! Yes, I’ve made an old time philosophical case to show we have the thought, that we would need it, true or otherwise, but that does not prove the reality cannot be, same as paranoia is not proof of safety. Just because we need the thought whether it’s true or not doesn’t prove it’s not. In fact – if we have a built-in meme that doesn’t care whether it’s true or not, if that’s true and necessary, then that suggests a function that must operate at all times, or under all circumstances, doesn’t it? In either condition! We need to think the better way is out there, even if it really is, because, well, what’s the point in an interactive world if you don’t know it is, or rather, we use deception sure, but the basic function of this organ is to perceive the world at least in some of the ways that it really is, and it wouldn’t what’s the word, exist, if it didn’t succeed at it to some degree.

Seems that change and hope are not always apparent looking outward, and that would be enough to give the idea of a better world an evolved reason to be. I’m just saying, if it’s true, if things really can be better, that doesn’t making thinking so dangerous or costly, matching thought to reality, that’s still the plan most of the time for an organism that enjoys viability! Of course, the basic version of this gene is, you need to think it to get you out of bed or get you in there not alone, to keep the ol’ genes alive and marching into the future and wow, put it that way, it doesn’t sound less deterministic and humancentric than the Bible, does it? Never mind!

Focus.

Anyhow, even the conservatives, even the Bible people, even those apparently committed to a static world as God made it and denying our power to affect things such as climate or war, even they have this meme, a utopia, even a sort of a map. Crazy as it is. Either there are many versions of the allele for what the utopia looks like, or there is no specific utopia allele at all, just the feeling that it’s out there and the urge to invent it.

Warning: employ some of your evolved, built-in hope: “not impossible” is likely to be as positive as it gets. I’ll try, but I’d have to be fooling myself, I think.

And again, take the mercies, none of which are small when you need them. If I prove to myself the utopia really is impossible, you won’t see this blog and this conversation never happened! Couldn’t hurt to have a go, right? Can’t dance and too fat to fly, as Mom used to say. I loved Mom, but she used to say some awful stuff, don’t we all.

OK, to it, what brings me here today.

So we have the gene for the urge. Do we have the genes for the utopia?

My entire blog has been an exercise in turning that question upside-down and saying: we have the genes for Nineteen Eighty-Four and we should stop selecting for them and activating them, and that feels like an answer to me, but I’ll grant it doesn’t to everybody. If you read me, you know, I think my version is the question we have in front of us now, and if we answer that, then maybe we’ll be in a better position to take the next step and start talking about positive things. But I suppose I should have a foray down that road, see if we can see around the first corner.

I always liked the following Tom Waits lyric –

Don’t you know there ain’t no Devil, there’s just God when he’s drunk?

But it seems my philosophy has taken me the other direction, it seems I see a world where there ain’t no God, just the Devil when he’s feeling sorry. Ah! There’s my way out of this!

Of course, we created both those entities. That is entirely up to us. I love Tom, but I’m tired of that world, his God must be wasted twenty-four seven. What, prithee, is the upside of assuming only good things about people or gods and then spending all your time trying to explain the discrepancies? Some folks are always selling, always spending their time on polish, improving the appearance of things that maybe require real, deep repair work. I don’t mean Waits, it’s just a meme. I mean the thought he voiced, not the particular individual voicing it, I mean something rational, thought-related, word-based . . . don’t get social on me now!

Sorry, the current pet peeve, taking me like a seizure. It’s not the person, it’s the thought. Don’t be listening to the mob, talking about people, specific people or groups of people! Don’t you know crowds are famously stupid? Find the smart few and listen to them talk about ideas, you know, like school and church – teachers, readers! Not your crowd of friends, talking about people! You know this, but we manage not to, but you know this and when you talk to me, I am going to hold you to it: crowds are stupid, yours too. Of course! A committee is a creature with six or more legs and no brain – so how smart is your crowd? How smart are the millions on social media, then?

You know this. You owe humankind that you act like it.

“Social” isn’t open-ended, it isn’t global. When you allow your people to talk such rubbish, when you go with the local flow, you are being social, prosocial with the folks around you and antisocial with the folks around you, and antisocial is where the power is because as I say every week, we have abuse-controlled genes – again, sort of assuming we don’t have the equal and opposite ones, because, well, empirical and anecdotal observation over six decades almost, I won’t lie. But maybe they’re in there. Maybe there are other reasons things appear, uh, one sided.

Wait – is my “genes for” meme wrong? Is it more like versions of genes, meaning we activate the mean version of a bunch of genes, that genes have two sides? If this is how things are, then there is no search to make, they’re right here, or right here buried, and if we managed to create an environment that touched those genes the other direction, then perhaps I would be having to wonder if it were possible to ruin a person instead of wondering if it’s possible not to.

Ouch. The truth hurts, so I guess that’s the case, or at least it’s my belief that it is.

Hey – do I do writing backwards?

Isn’t Hemmingway laying down a lot of personal pain and experience and it works because we all have those feelings . . . and aren’t I laying down global truths and having personal feelings about those instead? Trying, I mean, trying for truths and trying for universality . . . trying to be . . . “global-social?” Trying to transcend groupness, trying to find a “social” that isn’t largely antisocial. I don’t say “them” or “they” much, do I? I’ll plan to do so less, whatever that answer is. I know it’s usually “us” or “you” . . . hmm. OK. Maybe when I say “you” I’m often only addressing some version of “my people,” some group I feel I have a right to talk to or criticize. I’ll try to be more aware of that, I bet I’m failing that way. It’s supposed to be the universal “you,” but I suppose I complain about memes from here, about Christianity when a global version would be “religion,” like that. It’s xenophobia to specify some distant group when I need to talk about a group, though, so it’s not clear how I’m going to change that. Groupless language doesn’t exist, that’s one way to express our whole problem.

So, I haven’t gotten anywhere here, spent fifteen hundred words setting it up, then an obvious, single paragraph answer that adds up to my usual prescription, stop activating the worst versions exclusively, then maybe we’ll be able to stop fighting and talk about some positive future . . .

Don’t you know there ain’t no Devil, there’s just Darwin when he’s abused?

That’s better. Like I said, if I had proven there is no God, just the Devil hung over, we never would have had this talk. The versions of genes thing certainly echoes any psychological take on the situation, that when you take one option, the road not taken disappears, that I feel a need to search, because it is my cover-up in the first place, the answer I seek is written on a post-it note on my forehead, never to be seen looking outward. We have turned off our better natures, the genes we seek are the ones we have made invisible.

But it does mean they’re there!

Right?

It’s not no hope, right?

 

Jeff

September 29th., 2019

Oh, Twitter

Jeff/neighsayer3 Comments

– banned this morning.

First it was me calling someone a “shizo,” and fair enough, my bad, removed. So it’s restricted features – but the best ones, I’m talking to friend in DMs when suddenly I’m gone again.

Same message, some restricted features, DMs with your friends, except no, they are not letting me in at all. Sorry, Sue! Find me here if you want, I guess!

All I can imagine is somebody finally heard something I said, I guess!

I expect I’ve been targeted by some evil army of cat lovers or some militant quilting group or other.

I suppose I’ll sign in again for three minutes in the ten hours or so they say they’re giving me until they do it again. I feel seen!

Finally.

 

Jeff

Sept. 25th., 2019

AST and the Ape with Two Brains

Jeff/neighsayer3 Comments

Can’t use the guy’s title in my title, can I?

I like the Steve Martin reference anyway, because, well, I’m not right, am I? What the Hell has that got to do with anything?

I was already in a state, either some medicinal cock-up, toxoplasmosis, or just the three-year anniversary of losing my life coming around, but I’ve been having short nights and day naps and way too much fun talking to myself until I’m really not and I’m writing all day and night . . . and again, when I’m in this suggestible condition, some clever idea comes along and takes me away.

It’s this Iain McGilchrist dude and his Divided Brain idea.

It’s not a revolution for me, I wasn’t walking about invested in some meme about a single, integrated brain or consciousness, nothing like that. OK, wait, maybe I was, but that was the project, the plan, not my assessment of the current state of affairs. Not sure I had settled on such a clear statement of exactly two, mind you, horrible and honest to say, I was till sort of coming from the old ghost in the machine idea, I wasn’t trying to match the divisions in everything to any physiology, taking the I’m not a physiologist sort of stance – ha! That’s the politician “I’m not a scientist” stance – so reality doesn’t matter! Good Lord.

Iain knows this.

As a television watching member of the great unwashed, I hadn’t heard anything about the hemispheres since it was calculation vs emotion either, just as he said – this is frustrating. I mean it’s fun at times like these, when we get the next sensational update – but every update means we’ve all been stagnant, left behind and stupid for much of the recent past. Not to mention the guy bringing us the update is all pissy about it  like it’s our fault! Get over it, Man. You’re happy now, the headlines and the money are flowing, your department are the ones reaped the benefit of that stupid press last time, not the public.

That’s your deal with the Devil, don’t blame us!

I should talk, my pissiness is bloody boundless. Anyway.

No, not “anyway.” Let’s go with that. A great source of irritation for me has just been made clear by Iain, a great deal of the wind I try to blow against is just this situation, maybe. I don’t want to say “for me,” that is arrogant and braggadocious, and certainly we all suffer this – when our right brain has worked out something complex, like it does, a flood of human left-brained minutiae rubbish shows up to argue about it.

Right?

We need a safe gun policy!

No, “AR” doesn’t stand for “assault rifle” and it’s modeled after the M-16, but it has . . . irrelevant minutiae doesn’t even address the question – this is standard fare on social media, not one of the logical fallacies that show up from time to time. The bread and butter.

Do not elect these fascists!

Actually, America is a republic, and the current policy is crypto/pseudo/post modern . . . starts with a simple binary choice and now there are a hundred versions, and if I sound like I meant the wrong one, then they win or something.

Our left brains are trolls!

Trolling is an exercise in pushing left-brain dominance – and yes, look at the disintegration.

I noticed early on that the people around me weren’t synthesizing things like I was, that they didn’t seem bothered by dissonance, that they carry around conflicting ideas and principles and don’t seem to mind, when one fails, they put it away and pull out another one. Country music on my mind, so

Some folks leave church all buyin’ in and tryin’.

And some folks shake it off!

We ain’t in church Son, just you get the rope.

Extreme, click-bait example, way to build bridges there, Mate. But this was supposed to be me, discussing something within my scope – me.

I don’t enjoy the dissonance I have, it’s awful to come up against it, I understand we spend our lives running from that, and no kidding, “you’ve always been wrong about everything, or at least half” – that doesn’t just hurt, it takes the point and the motivation out of you, that’s like “how do I go on?” Or worse, depending, it’s brain stuff, maybe it’s “how would I even know if am ‘going on?’”

Debilitating, that is.

No doubt, we will move Heaven and Earth, make a million angels dance on a pinhead (is that a description of a microprocessor or what, shut up, focus)  and utterly ignore the bounds of truth to escape it. Knowing that, the conscious work would seem to be looking for a real way out of it first, because you are going to pick one anyway, real or not. Where is the harm in taking a shot at reality in that scenario?

Sure we say we won’t know it when we find it, but how would we know?

So I try. I learn something new, job one is do I have a place to put this? Does if it fit, does it clash? If it fits, if it has to fit, what previous idea is now defunct and has to go? I know I’m sure to be full of undiscovered inconsistencies in my mind, but I am trying not to add any new ones. New popular science memes and such, any new thing should go through this curation process, and I try, and I’m sorry, but, I’ve always been a little lonely, feeling like I’m the only one I know who tries very hard.

If it doesn’t fit, ridicule it and back burner it, I guess that’s my way.

Brain hemispheres didn’t not fit, I was just ignoring it – the calculation vs emotion meme didn’t seem to bear on my abuse focus anyhow, for me the abuse hurts both of that anyhow, you feelings and your IQ, so drawing that line didn’t come to bear on anything I was holding dear. But this new take bears!

It’s more small picture vs big picture, apparently, left vs right brain, like, hard little facts vs higher levels of complexity – there was an elegant little test with pigeons, by covering one eye at a time, it seems that one side of the pigeon’s brain finds tiny food among tiny non-food items, seeds in the dirt, while the other side of the brain sees the larger world around, the lay of the land, watches for hawks – bigger picture.

I have a small concern there, very small, but still: pigeons are fearless. I’ve watched them not avoid predation at all on my TV (huge catfish were one such predator). I hear the ring-necked doves on the mainland take to the sky in a lightning storm in some mad game of chicken! Perhaps you saw the Facebook video a few years back of that toddler grabbing a pigeon by the head and taking its cracker? Did you notice, the bird is utterly untraumatized and doesn’t even walk away?

LOL – it doesn’t hurt the theory, just that the hawk example may not actually work for this exact creature, and I don’t assume McGilchrist is a pigeon biologist. This right brained “big picture” is unhurt by one small left-brain detail example being off – but. Ha.

It does sort of suggest he hasn’t talked to Bob Trivers, who was indeed a pigeon biologist, and that’s never an endorsement in my mind! I sent Iain an email suggesting just that, got a polite answer from a student or someone. Ha, boy I’m having some fun here. Again, not a criticism, would be an appeal to authority anyway, and again, this pigeon detail doesn’t matter, pigeons surely have a big picture whether being preyed upon is part of it or not – and I know, it’s bizarre if it’s not, but it seems that way with them!

I’m just saying, dating service to the intellectuals, you two boys complement each other nicely, I plan to read McGilchrist, but it’s taken me three years, the last book, I’m having issues, so I’ll watch the films and project, conjecture, “extrapolate” I’ll say, if it looks good! Please let me stop having so much fun sometime soon. Here’s the thing.

Trivers’ Folly of Fools, the deception stuff, and the interpretive function suggested for the right brain by McGilchrist et al., I assume he’s not alone, that seems all one to me – and if right brain damage is truly a legitimate way to think about it, then maybe I am the third leg of that table, and it’s abuse causing it, right?

I jump ahead, part of the process for me, go too far and then see if it’s supportable, but stuff comes to me as one liners sometimes and I have to catch up –

Left brain dominance is a right brained idea that says “hey, we should listen to left brain” when we’re stressed, in the ol’ fight or fly debate.

OK, bloody obvious, you put it that way. All part of the what’s the word, the autonomic response? – no research required.

Stress makes you fast and stupid? No excrement, Einstein! No dung, Dirac. But OMG, is it that easy to shut down our higher processing? I mean, is it really half shut down all the time? The audit is proceeding at quite a pace.

He talked about “peaks of civilization,” Homeric age Greece, classical times, the renaissance – another foible, I think, classic European ignoring of Babylon and such, but again, not a deal breaker – he said they rose and fell on a crest of left brain dominance I think – rose on it? I think? – but his point was fell from it, and I see a crack for me to slide into there, too, my general split from the whole civilization meme. He said our attempts to control one another – civilization – is what stresses us out and leaves the right brain out of the loop, and yeah, sure. He even pointed to my cause – these ostensibly legitimate attempts!

Hey, there’s one out there like me!

I’m dropping the microphone.

That was the eureka moment, right there.

See you in ten minutes, probably.

 

 

Jeff

Sept. 24th., 2019

Gettin’ Me Wrong, or I Love You

Jeff/neighsayer1 Comment

I’m a nice fellow.

I know, I rant, I’m angry and frustrated, and I complain and I got justifications and explanations but that doesn’t make it nicer to be around, but I swear, like everyone, no doubt, it started from a good place, albeit a long time ago. I must have been asked the central question of morality as a child when I was complaining like I do, because that’s what it’s all been about for me. Me, a child moral philosopher, must have said to someone, “be good!” and gotten the answer so many navel gazing fools like me have spent their lives trying to answer – “Why?”

I’ve spent my life trying to come up with a convincing answer, despite pretty much admitting straight off that I all had for it was my and other folks’ simple comfort (pain avoidance, I would say today, trading in some early Christian language for more scientific stuff). That’s the usual content of my writing, that quixotic rational attempt, a long run at improving upon the ‘comfort’ answer – and that’s actually going rather well, in a test tube, so to speak, but I didn’t expect anything and I got something. Mostly just that, my life’s work in this paragraph: comfort isn’t nothing, because the reverse, pain, isn’t nothing.

The way pain isn’t nothing, scientifically and causatively in our lives, that’s pretty much every other entry in this blog, so trying not to today.

Pain that I for some reason am placing in other people’s songs these days. I’ve been watching Burns’ Country Music documentary and I’m obsessing about I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, I’m trying to write city lyrics to evoke the same stuff. I’m stuck on a bit of pain around that song that Hank was their – our! My own hillbilliness is becoming clear this week – Shakespeare was and is so loved, because despite being a man, despite being an American, he, while gripped by intense emotion, could cry. I think we all believed the man really had the actual capability, and damned if he isn’t just too good for this ol’ world, then, Amen.

Hyperbole, I know. I know the fellow cried puh-lenty, and publicly. We know he could! So hats off to the Ubermensch! Of course, my version of his story there is about us. I don’t know where or when to say it, so here and now, I guess: the man was rarely alone, and never for long. He was feeling that either in the minutes before bed on the road or he was feeling that all day long, surrounded by human beings. But pain is pain, really, I accept his expressions, boy, don’t we all.

So this morning I woke up having rewritten a verse of Dylan in my sleep, although to be completely truthful, I think of it as a John Daly song now, ha.

Ma, take these victims offa me

I can’t take it anymore

Don’t need live-in enemies

I feel I’m knockin’ on Heaven’s door

Don’t get me wrong, again, that critique was for us, not for Hank. I am one of them, I love and worship the man – in fact what is AST, what is my whole inner life, what are the last two million words of my blog if not a long, far less interesting and emotional exposition of Cold, Cold Heart, past pain and hard feelings, minds that are not free?

A thousand of me can type on a thousand typewriters for a thousand years and never write something like that.

(OK, there’s something. Same as “why?,” I can try to mesh artistic truths like these with the rational side of our lives. That’s the plan.) Which brings us to the brain, with its two sides.

Someone else is invading my too-open mind this week, this Iain McGilchrist chap with his brain hemisphere business, I watched his Divided Brain show on a bit of a loop last night. I’m not overly taken by the larger idea, the increasingly left-brained world, although I don’t feel a need to disagree – I saw in the show, that’s many of we left-brained idiots’ reaction, ha – but it resonated personally that I have been sort of shooting all around this idea myself, getting parallel ideas.

I have written and talked about the way I first perceived it as a “two sorts of people” sort of thing, lined up with two takes on science, on religion, on politics, two ways of seeing the world, and my take wasn’t completely backwards from his, I was seeing a one mindset that saw more things as alive and changing, and saw processes and change, as opposed to another sort of paradigm that sees a million facts, names everything and memorizes all the names and places for them, so to speak, but static, frozen in time.

That is pretty much what they are saying about the brain in this show, left does fine work, detail, and the right does bigger picture stuff – except it’s just unfortunate that the right side of the brain is what does the “left” side of politics and vice versa, the left, detail side dominates the political right, lists of things: white people, black people, dollars, jobs. The “logic” of nationalism and war. No processes, only things: no evolution, no change: the world as God created it. Dogmatic religion is politically right and left-brain dominant.

Why would God give me a brain that’s a straight up database if everything was just going to be changing all the time?

Maybe it will take hold, the two-brain idea. It does answer my strawman’s question, He gave you two! Why the other one if you don’t employ it?

Hmmm . . . it occurs, must be a thing for Iain, that while the left brain deals in details and important realities, maybe there’s room in the right side for all the different interpretations of those realities, and so it’s powerful – but somewhat less beholding to veracity. That other meme around his idea, that it either conquers the world or disappears, that’s rubbish. This flexibility is a focus for Trivers, the deception stuff, and my whole thing is a huge one of such phenomena. I don’t think any of this is going away.

Not that it matters, I’m mostly just running in place with my hands over my ears going “La la la” really loud trying not to hear the victims in that verse above this morning, but what am I on about today again? Oh yes. I’m a nice guy.

See, the thing is . . . I love you.

I’m stealing that, a movie line, “Five Corners,” Tim Robbins to John Turturro, I think, good guy to bad guy in that one, and feels right, seems applicable.

That’s my answer, that’s “why.”

That’s why I’m frustrated, that’s why I’m angry, that’s why I yell at you, because I am trying to help you because I love you – us, I love us – same rap as everyone who abuses you, right?

That works, for a minute. That shuts me up, it resonates, I feel guilty, I’m making you sad, you’re right, I’ll shut up, you win . . . and now I’ve shut up and you’ve won and now no-one got hurt, right? Well, there was the small matter of me, my feelings, my dreams of helping you, that personal crap . . . then the matter of the original problem I’m trying alone to solve, our comfort, human (not only human!) pain, etc., but sure, words are weapons, they hurt, no kidding.

First, I never touched you – anyone. I’ve never laid a finger on anyone.

I understand, Mike Tyson yells at you, that’s scary, abuse, even, depending you feel trapped also or something. Of course Mike should be allowed to talk and feel, like anyone, but I’m saying, I understand that a person with a history of violence shouting at you is a threat, straight up. I also understand that an unknown person shouting at you is the same threat, guy could be some Mike Tyson type, for God’s sake, LOL – sorry, Mike. I don’t think you’re like that anymore, and my whole thing is I love you, I don’t think you ever wanted to be that, I mean, that those desires were not your invention or any baby’s intention. Ever see “Five Corners?” Not many did, I don’t think. This was my reaction when I read the very first thing about Mike, by the way, his here comes Mikey article – fear and sympathy, instantly, for some reason. He’s a bit of a psycho –  a charismatic, I mean, same thing. He seemed important, immediately, somehow, a poster child for human pain.

But somehow no history of violence doesn’t matter. I’m suffering, and no-one is getting physical on me, either, so I can’t argue the point, words hurt, ideas hurt. It hurts, what I’m thinking. It would be nicer of me to just shut up. That would have been easier in a different age, when getting along socially meant getting along socially with a world that wasn’t turning Nazi on me,  though. Empathy, getting along socially is bad news, really bad stuff. Tell everyone they’re all supposed to agree about things and then inject some evil ideas and boom – Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I love you. Your empathy is evil walking the streets, in charge.

No, shut up! Not today! Don’t you know all they respond to is compassion, agreement? I thought you loved them!

I sympathize. That’s my love. Empathy is just conformity. If you loved me, you wouldn’t depend on the feeling to take you, to just happen, you’d try to feel me, not override any possibility for variation with some empathic-sounding projection of some feeling we’re all supposed to have. That’s what you get, I love you, but you’re wrong. I love you, but your feelings are all messed up.

Come on. You know it’s not really your true friends who agree with you all the time, don’t you? You know a friend that doesn’t ever try to teach you anything probably isn’t working for your interests? Our “friends’” empathy is what sends our children off to die for Big Oil. Is that how friends treat one another?

It’s because I love you that I call you a stupid violent ape and beg you to change your ways, because if you do, then maybe your son doesn’t have to go off to the middle east and not come back or come back as a living, massively suffering poster for why you never should have let him go. Whereas your “friends” agree with you about those worthless bastards in the middle east and your kid can go to literal Hell, thank you for your service. I love you. You need new friends, oh my God.

 

Ma, get my friends outta here

Tell ‘em, take their tools of war

This battle’s end is growing near

And I feel I’m knockin’ on Heaven’s door

 

See, here’s the thing . . . I love you. I’m not trying to hurt you. I guess it looks the same, maybe that’s all there ever has been, so of course that’s what it’s going to be again. But it’s not. It’s old, I mean, it’s Hank Williams, but it’s new. I know, you probably don’t believe that either, but it is.

It’s love, and it’s . . . new.

 

Jeff

Sept. 23rd., 2019

Carrying on . . .

I’m not trying to hurt you. I’ve never laid a finger on anyone that way, and here’s the thing – I never will, I’m never ever going to. I’m frustrated that doesn’t matter, I want to ask, in a hundred years when I am safely dead, gone, and forgotten – then will you stop being too afraid of me to listen to me?

Then, when it’s a matter of record, this man never touched anyone in a violent way, then will someone consider the possibility that I want to help the world and not hurt it? Frustrated, and that’s my cry from my roof, but I just sort of woke up to a cold universe about it.

We don’t do that.

We don’t have the capability to react to non-violence. Why would we?

That isn’t exactly survival critical, is it?

I am sort of blown away at the moment, it’s like that when you realize what you’ve had completely backwards all your life, I’m . . . bloody Hell, really? Me?

Speechless. Somewhere in the dark night of my soul I can a hear a soft, lonely and terrifying echo . . .

I think it’s Bill Shatner, saying, “ . . . then what?”

 

Jeff

September 25th., 2019

Human Contact

Jeff/neighsayer1 Comment

I have a bad attitude, sure. There’s the waiver, and if you think that means I must be wrong, then move along, we’re not going to be able to actually communicate across that gulf. We live in different worlds.

You know I basically think it about those of you who stay, too. Sorry, Canadian “Aloha,” or “Shalom.” I am sorry, my sorry butt apologizes. If it helps, this one’s about me falling for positive nonsense too, most of the time. And I’m at the computer because I’m ready to fight back, I think I’ve got an answer, and yes, it’s sort of automatic at this point, much of this I don’t have to sit down and work through like arithmetic, it’s compulsive and these answers grab me when I’m pouring a cup of tea, or planning something else and they send me here in a hurry, like some sort of textual IBS.

(But then I get lost in the usual ten years and first page of preamble and often forget the insight and it’s back again next week. I don’t want to work myself out of a job, I guess.)

It’s all the same principle, but I seem to believe it and I’m engaged in an ongoing audit of what I used to think, what you all apparently think now, and this Murphy’s Law of Nature/Antisocialization Theory is slowly replacing everything it touches, like evolution audited and continues to audit the life sciences.

The pressure for positivity is constant.

I’ve always felt it, always sort of railed against it – but don’t listen to me, I have “depression.” It used to mean sad for no reason, pathological, and I railed against it then. These days it means sad when you have to go to work, no matter what the reason. Imagine how much I like that sort of talk now. OK, on with it, sort of.

You know, my whole focus, my “theory,” basically to talk about stuff everyone knows and no-one considers worth talking about, it’s all about us messing with one another, about us hurting one another, reinforcing one another’s anger and madness, basically being bad influences upon each other, much of it done for reasons, good, inescapable reasons, if you believe what humans say on the subject, and Good Lord, see paragraph one.

When I first cracked Trivers’ book on deception and self deception, I was beyond excited, I was scared, not kidding. My inner life is my life, yours isn’t? How are you supposed to think about self-deception, like with your own brain? Learning about learning, thinking about thinking, that’s taking the editor to you operating code, isn’t it? OK, it isn’t, or maybe not for everyone, but it sounded like it. When he opened with his self-effacing story about his own thieving left hand apparently operating autonomously, that didn’t exactly put me at ease. I almost went to “what kind of monster thinks he can write this book?”

But mostly I just thought how is it possible?

I didn’t assume he’d miss it and it would suck. I suppose it could be “positivity,” and I try to shoot my own sacred cows if I see them, but the idea that Bob is smarter than me is one such cow I have not yet considered shooting, that and death. Taxes, well that’s a political lie. Of course some folks escape taxes.

Well, he didn’t completely turn his whole brain inside out, not permanently, or mine either, thank goodness. It was the Nurture Assumption did that! And for opposite reasons. That one was a right-wing lie, a status quo tome marketed as a revolution. From my POV now, it exposed a deep human truth as a foundationless lie we all live with for no apparent reason. It gave me my insight though, inspiringly offensive, that was! I loved her voice, she’s a real pro writer, and it doesn’t seem malicious – just misguided. Her guide, on the other hand, he seems to not mind being associated with the wrong sorts of people.

The Folly of Fools, on the other hand, is a level up in one’s understanding, a maturation all around.

Nothing to fear but fear itself! It’s all just electrons moving around in the end, same as the computer, right? Happiness is resilience, I do better when I think I’m learning, even if it’s nasty old nature stuff.

Man, I wasn’t kidding! What was today’s topic again?

(Scrolling up . . . ah yes! That’s why the hurry. Sometimes if I pick a meaningful title and get it down fast, that helps.)

Human contact, social connections – first, on a personal note, that’s YOU for me. YOU could interact a little, just saying. I don’t think it’s a coincidence I am left alone to my thoughts and feelings so utterly and then when I try to talk, I call you all dumb, violent apes. Chicken or egg deal, but I wasn’t always alone, I’ve been thoroughly dumped, so I’m going with “egg.”(I do anyway in that riddle, for real. Evolution means that the first chicken egg did indeed not issue from a chicken, but from some ancestor because there weren’t always chickens because there wasn’t always everything just as God made it, world without beginning or end. Because that. Riddles show your paradigm to be past its usefulness.) OK, to business, you trapped and used and wishing for better dumb, violent apes with dreams!

Any better? I said I was sorry.

You need your human contact, everyone says it, and frankly, we are not such an agreeable species that consensuses like these should not be viewed with the utmost cynicism. Everybody always says things that are clearly true all day long, right, because we all somehow intuit that only we can see this obvious truth? Truths that everyone knows and agree with always require constant vocalization and support, right? Call me paranoid; it doesn’t matter. I know you’re one of them, ha.

To repeat, my whole idea is that humans spend a whole lot of time bashing each other into line and brutalizing one another’s feelings in endless cycles of abuse that add up to any other nation would be insane to invade us, because we are wild, crazy, uncontrollable armed  . . . I am trying not to swear. Have I already? No? Good for me! Armed . . . good ol’ boys, then, I guess. This is my narrative, my EP, which I set against the world of illusion story about how this abusive control of one another has made us good, kind, cooperative, empathetic – sorry to repeat a recent blog, but, this sure is a lovely list of words, isn’t it?

This, from punishment, which, I am going to swear, I am going to scream, which shut up and don’t argue, I’m sorry, this is why no-one engages, I know, good, civilized punishment and discipline are composed mostly of abuse, it’s the obvious major component. You’ve told me a million times, everyone always, and again messaging you can never escape must be true, right, but tell me how, tell me why that’s supposed to be “good” for you?

So you’re lying about even believing that the bad, illegal stuff is actually “bad” for you with this line of reasoning? This one hundred percent pure alcohol is poison, but this ninety present stuff will restore your health? I’m saying, if you drink the ninety percent stuff, you don’t really believe it’s good for you. If you drink the ninety percent stuff, you know every morning that the truth is the other way around.

OK, I have been beating that drum forever now, websites have been born and died while I screamed that same, seems to me simple bit of logic. Humour me for a moment, assume it’s true yourself, just a little thought experiment:

If it’s true, how is this other meme true, we all need social connections, we die without them? Isn’t it just saying again, what humans have for you, that’s good for you, like no matter what the . . oops, no matter what that may be? Again, blanket statements everyone is compelled to make at one another all day long, I don’t think Bob spent a lot of time on that, but that’s what I got out of it – of course those must be true!

I was in a very bad way when I first began my new life alone, and I bought in, I had had a breakdown, I was alone for the first time, I was terrified, and Facebook over that first Christmas was torture. Remember folks, while you’re celebrating, to reach out to those less fortunate, some folks in your life are having a hard time, people need people, it’s hormones, science . . .

I’ve been dumped, I’m alone and what am I doing, that’s dangerous, you fool! You need those connections, you are at risk!

I bought in, scared me more, it’s science, right? Who am I to argue?

Well, therein lies another joke, another upside-down thing in the world: who is this particular would be writer if I don’t? That’s pretty much my gender and my identity. Sorry. You’re reading me online, so you know. Some things can’t be unseen. Even unseen things, oddly enough.

I know, complain about Facebook, fine, but that’s actual science, from folks I am still impressed by, too, Trivers, Sapolsky. Not to forget Alice Miller and psychology either, I know, so there is truth, we need the eggs. All I’m saying is that that truth will have to coexist with AST, with me and Murphy’s Law of Nature. It’s true, sure it’s true – but it’s a social lie that it carries along with it that it’s the only thing that’s true.

And that is clearly not the case.

The ubiquity of the message, that everyone gives it, that it leaves no room for anything else . . . a fourth time, these are not the hallmarks of veracity.

If it were even the majority truth, that human contact is good for you, then we would get more and more passive with population pressure, wouldn’t we? Your kid would slowly get nicer at school and if human contact makes us better, then what monsters were we when we were born to have been molded and nurtured by all this healthy contact for twenty years and turn out as a standard, no frills, twenty-year-old man?

Do I need to spell that out?

All that nice psychology and science on Facebook (and everywhere else, of course) supports the warrior society status quo, of course, if you know me, of course that’s what’s going on, what the ladies call “the patriarchy,” and honestly, that’s close enough for me, it’s a world closer than the stupid origin story the boys tell about war and civilization. It hasn’t been easy for me to separate this patriarchy talk, to stop defending my own penis, but this is the truth, we are close, Ladies, two orders of magnitude closer to one another than I am to the boys in this conversation. I would hand you the world right now; it couldn’t hurt. Hoit, I mean. Sorry, Bugs, I don’t mean to steal without citation.

Basically, this society’s consensus when you’re alone is you need to get up and back into the battle, some battle. That’s why a testosterone supplement gets as much respect as therapy. And maybe it’s all true, God forbid, but I’m too dumb to be afraid to ask the question: what if that’s true, what if I need the contact, the oxytocin or whatever and if I have to join the war, well, soldiers really do make big, important social connections, right, brothers in arms? It’s possible that is also a description of what Facebook and Sapolsky are telling us, isn’t it?

(Gawd, he must be a sad one. He’s been thirty years ahead of me on this, he’s been here forever, poor bastard, to put it in Hunter S. Thompson terms.)

Well, that’s the part of the story I wanted to make sure you don’t escape anyway. We will be, I’m tired of this meme, subject to our unconscious biology forever if we can only think that single step ahead, like “you need social connections,” like, your social connections are problematic.

We have to grow up and start to ask, sure human contact, but to what end?

What is it they do when they get together?

OK, that was almost an ending, but I should try to make a case, maybe a personal one. I reacted badly, I admit it, and honestly, I did so, almost consciously, or at least I’m believing my own “I meant to do that” story now. I reacted badly to my ousting and divorce, and I can’t imagine how I wouldn’t have chosen the same again if I could have again. It was high time for me to react, period, somehow, to something, and maybe a good reaction wouldn’t have satisfied.

This has felt like trauma happening to me from external sources, but I know I’m the one making the following choices, even if I still think there weren’t other options: once I lost my ladies, I shed everyone else too, and I have failed to make new friends, some online folks being the exceptions. But at least some I cannot regret.

One fellow was a real bro type, a Trumpie type, a soldier. I parted with him over Roy Moore and him calling Moore’s accusers “fake.” This fellow’s best friend half his life was exactly a Roy Moore type, and everyone knew it, forever. Must be fake, right?

One was a cocaine addict who would call having fronted to get high and needed money to keep him out of the harbour. Those were my last two male friends within a thousand miles, Trumpie misogynist and an addict with enforcers in tow – do I need those connections? What if I’m a believer, I think I need connections, and that’s all that’s available?

Then Facebook and science and the whole world is advising me, it’s a matter of life and death!

To be fair, none of them say “even when they’re this bad,” but they don’t not say it either. Aren’t we all sinners, deserve a chance and need the connections – even guys with guy problems like that? That’s the message and it works for the never-ending warrior society. I felt the pressure.

But I’m feeling much better now, ha.

 

Jeff,

Sept. 21st., 2019

The March of Science

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

Sarcasm, don’t worry!

First the proposition, on the proposition that if it’s straightforward enough, I’ll be done early – competition in science theory brings us the best and brightest just like competition between political candidates does, and for the same reasons, they both tell people what they want to hear, ask for money, and happen to believe whatever pays. Don’t make me list idiot politicians, you know.

My field of interest is human origins, human morality, philosophy, some sort of evolutionary psychology. Not the all male competition one. So I took a course on YouTube from one such luminary – yes, that was my credentials right there, show some reverence. I’ve read a popular science book or two as well, a real renaissance man, I am – Dr. Robert Sapolsky, and while following him down the YouTube plumbing for a bit I saw him, on Alan Alda’s show, maybe. He –an excellent fellow, other luminaries say so, and it seems true – he was saying his gig is not without stress that the profs and authors are all alpha dogs and the competition is fierce, and I’ve been thinking about other things, that was nearly three years for me now, but it’s starting to sink in.

Trump basically proved guns and not brains wins democracy, and I’ve satisfied myself that comedy is nothing but a fight – if it were an IQ test, it would be at least half women – that’s what “competition” is.

We, as a species are multi-talented renaissance men like I am, meaning, dropout thinks he’s clever, pleased to meet you. We do not have a thousand separate functional meritocracies for every individual skill. Competition is nothing but a fight, for all intents and purposes, and I am not seeing a reason, as fascism turns the lights out on everything, to imagine that it’s any different in the realm of knowledge either. Comedy is constantly purged of hilarious men and women who “just couldn’t cut it,” so we all get to love the ones that do. Not that they’re funnier – but they can hang in there. Who needs a comic that’s afraid of a few beer mugs?

So that’s the comedy we get – and for sure, that’s the sort of science theory we get too. Ask any lady scientist, or most any. Certainly there is a feminist science movement, never mind just better science from any gender that fail to find explanatory power for everything in competitive violence.

Being male, I too wish to break it down a little further, separate my male self from the automatic assumption of violence, and find myself in that last category. I don’t accept as a premise for feminism the offering of a noun for an answer to the question of “why?” – men, I mean, of course. Simple nouns – like men, ha! – not complex process nouns, are not explanations; it’s a sign that science and rationality have left off when it’s not a thing happening that explains a thing happening but simply a thing existing that’s supposed to do it. It’s not an error always, just the end of that idea’s reach, just not explanatory.

What is happening, what are these men doing, or what does their presence indicate? Fighting, is the answer, isn’t it? Pushing people around, getting physical, or threatening to? Isn’t that the point?

But what, they’re allowed, so all we can say is they’re here or not?

It’s a little harder to picture in science than comedy, surprise a newbie a little more, I would think, but not by much, profs and students, the struggles of lady profs . . . and of course these swine are selecting themselves by their violent means. It’s not their best scientists voting for it to be another alpha tournament like a crime family – that would be the hammerhead scientist alpha and he’s going to run the department according to whatever “science” brings the money and he’s department head and you’re not, Einstein, now all things being relative how about you sit down and shut up?

So now that this is what I think, all this science/atheist/Democrat stuff on Twitter and at school (both more social than rational) about the scientific method and science self-correcting and getting closer everyday sounds like a lot of puffed up blustering bullshit.

Trump will prove it tomorrow by declaring himself King of Science and putting his name on all the textbooks and the IDW will line up behind him, all social science will end . . . the inevitable march of science and progress, the invisible hand of the market of truth, don’t ya know.

I can’t get an audience, with anybody, did I mention?

I can’t set up a situation where anyone is willing to hear my questions, I’ve tried my life story, I’ve tried provocative challenges to their egos, I’ve begged, I’ve offered to pay, I mean, I know, you’re busy. The closest I ever got was Trivers, he addressed it, brief as Hell, but he’s the only one who did, maybe the only one who could, I don’t know. But if it’s a competition, there’s no sense getting into it with some guy on the street like me, with no status to win or lose, huh?

You’re right to evade me for you – just so wrong for science, and for humankind. But I am dangerous, I’m unaffiliated. I can say anything.

 

 

Jeff

Sept. 20th.,

The Twin Studies Got it So Wrong

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

Sometimes, when you learn a new thing, a new principle, a new scientific principle, some of your existing “knowledge” needs auditing, updating.

A classic case in point pretty recently, is the Rat Park story, where the classic study showed rats to be subject to addiction and opiates to be addictive to some huge percentage of them – but that on a more recent re-visit to the study, the basic environment was considered, the bare, concrete and steel sterile environment the original test was run in proved to be a large part of the puzzle, that when the rats had the semblance of a better life, the drug’s addictive power was lessened.

I’m a classic crackpot, a one trick pony. I have a single new principle I spend all my time on, Murphy’s Law of Nature – the idea that Nurture is real, it’s just not positive. The idea that abuse is a form of Nurture that has always and forever produced actual results. The idea it audits today is the twin studies, and the apparent victory of Nature over Nurture that they have been touted as.

Spectacular phenotypic results, right?

Separated twins, raised thousands of miles apart having very specific common behaviours, magic! Beware of magical results in science. Multiple Personality Disorder you would only believe if you believed in magic, in the transmigration of souls – what were all the “personalities” supposed to be? What I want to say about the reported results of the twin studies is this: it is absolutely first year biology that phenotype is genes AND environment, simple arithmetic, that the folks writing these studies up swept under the rug – yes, two and two equal four, and here’s your four – but one of the twos was really a one, or a three!

You can tell me the different household was a different environment, but four minus two equals two. You had another two there, your “different environments” weren’t, not in a way that actually affects what you are testing for later, period. Science troll boys – save your breath, I won’t be turned from this. You got it completely backwards, in the most basic sense.

But you have proved something we need to know, exactly that, that human child-rearing is the same, the world over! All the differences we argue about don’t add up to anything! If there’s anything good about it, we all do it – but, Murphy’s Law of Nature, there really isn’t, it’s the bad stuff that matters – and if there’s something bad about it, we all do it. This is what I’m always trying to say.

 

Jeff

Sept. 15th., 2019

Your Outsize Cranium

Jeff/neighsayer3 Comments

I believe the usual theory about why humans are so different goes to this outsize brain, isn’t that right? I’m going to talk about that although David Suzuki made a point in the Nature documentary about the latest Tyrannosaurus data that bird brains are very dense with neurons compared to ours and that the amount of real estate your brain occupies may not be as indicative of processing power as we think. He said birds are very smart, and the apparently small-brained dinosaurs, especially predators, were likely also quick on the draw. But we aren’t suggesting we outsmarted birds or lizards, just the other ancient chimps, so the volume of sand your cranium can hold is probably meaningful. I guess.

The theory of that, as I understand it, at least in our current, rather male and war-centric origin story is that the selective pressure for that brain to grow so was nothing other than us, other people, or other groups of people, and our conflicts with one another. A Red Queen’s game to be sure, all of us driving up our hat sizes to stay competitive, just to stay in the race, running in place.

So what comes next is a dualism.

On the one hand, our conflicts are sort of boundless, everything is in play, so to speak, and so these expensive organs have adapted to use everything, meaning, as Steven Pinker points out (within his job description, I think) that we have a sort of any purpose processor, we can plug many sorts of problems into it and work on them – in theory, even if said problems are not specifically evolved for, like all the new things we have brought into the world, for better and worse. It ain’t universal, of course, but somewhere on the path to that. Perhaps all the real estate is for that module, as Pinker put it, but I don’t think he said so specifically, I don’t think we know that. Do we assume it? I guess.

On the other hand, fighting is fighting. On the other hand, if conflict grew this thing, then maybe that’s all the damned thing does. That’s what selected it, that’s what grew it, fine, that’s all in the past, we say, Pinker says, maybe.

But surely that’s not what the bloody thing is for! Is it?

What I’m saying, what I’m always trying to say is, if it is, if that’s what it’s for, then we need to know that and factor that awful setup into our thinking. Conflict isn’t what is going to get us out of the present mess and it’s never going to get us to a better way of life, not the first tiny step towards the utopia if we just keep letting it do what it was made to do, if that’s what it was made to do. Plus –

What if, and this does seem the most likely, what if they’re both true?

What if all that real estate is the free-floating, general purpose processor, and it’s just us choosing to use it for almost nothing but our fights?

Wouldn’t that be a sad state of affairs. Well, wouldn’t that have been a sad state of affairs, I mean. But what if we had the choice?

 

Jeff

Sept. 15th., 2019

 

If that were what it was for, or if we believed that, if that was all we used it for, then I suppose intelligence and fighting skills would all look the same to us, aggression might appear intelligent, duplicity might, treachery might – anything that wins a fight would be “smart.” Of course anything that didn’t would be “stupid.”

I get it. Letting yourself be killed probably counts as stupid.

Problem is, all peace is in that category. Peace is going to require some surgery, we have to separate your libido from your amygdala – and your aggression from your intelligence.

 

Jeff

In the Beginning

Jeff/neighsayer14 Comments

A neat little “just so” package that couldn’t possibly be true, except . . .

I think AST may have a suggestion as to how we began, how we got on this path to what we’re calling civilization, between three elements, the organization of group animals into hierarchies with the dominance of the alphas, AST, which describes the technology of abuse (including the technology of punishment and the human “moral” framework), and finally, perhaps a foundational case of Trivers’ evolved self deception.

The primate alpha starts the abuse, to establish his privilege, and his victims, stressed, hurting, or simply hurting socially, turn and take their hurt on someone they can, and so the abuse, like the stuff of plumbing problems, flows downhill in a champagne fountain of cortisol – I believe this is Sapolsky’s description of the average baboon troop, in my own words, of course. I think we see similar stuff in the chimpanzees and I think most folks think that was us at some point – even those who don’t think it’s still us today, that is – so that was the first condition and the first bit of science, biological dominance behaviours and deflection, and the resulting abuse-sharing pyramid scheme.

At some point, the champagne fountain of stress and pain becomes entrenched, and this is where maybe we engage the rationalizations, the self deception – “I meant to do that,” kind of thing. “No, I didn’t beat your ass because I’m a subordinate and the boss beat mine! I did it because I’m the alpha in our relationship and I say it’s good for you.” You know, prepare you for adulthood, when the boss’s kids do this to you – “my” idea, not clearly the boss’ agenda. And then this whole, species-wide crap about how it’s good for you, how you’re “spoiled” without it. So, that was the third condition, us lying to ourselves, and maybe the effect among these causes, to some degree, the baboon volcano of fear and violence that encompasses us all and starts with some alpha swine over-prioritizing himself and ends with us all explaining to our kids, “no, this was my idea, and this is good for you.”

I meant to do that.

Despite the lies we tell regarding why we do what we do and what effects our actions can have, though, there is and clearly has to be an actual reason or several that we do these things, a powerful reason this behaviour took our species over and won’t let go, and I have ranted almost endlessly trying to make the point that we antisocialize ourselves in service of conflict, of crappy old game theory. And I’m agin’ it. Whenever I’m reading some description of nasty old nature, I always think I’m hearing approval, advocacy for violent selection processes – not what I’m trying to do at all, I think I’m describing hidden, secret nasty old nature, not to say roll with it, but to say this is the trap here, the invisible fence, this is what we need to break out of.

Which comes first, the selection for abuse, or the cover story, I can’t tell. One would think they happen together, but perhaps there have been and still are places where no pretense of “good for you” is even made, times and/or places where “good for me” was all you got. So I think, in terms of causality and history, the deceit is the latest element, the modern, perhaps liberal adaptation we apply over our antisocialization – making people “good,” teaching them “right from wrong.” Surely your liberals beat their children to make them non-violent, at least that’s supposed to be the plan. So now they think that what was always a single purpose technology – violence and desensitization in service of the troop’s warrior goals – now they think it’s a magic wand, violence and desensitization in service of whatever we say! Nothing simple and understandable here, cause matched to an effect, no – we apply a single stimulus and get whatever result we wanted, is this a great country or what.

I liked Wrangham’s synopsis of capital punishment as an evolved way to deal with tyrants – we should try it sometime.

I mean it sounds great, but I’m not sure we ever did, not regularly, at least. The alpha sets the tone and it permeates everything in our lives, this human lifestyle is his. There have almost certainly been some shining examples, but the mainstream evolution thread here is the dark side, I think we should admit that before it’s all over, any minute now. Warrior society is where we all have Stockholm Syndrome and appear to love the randomly violent alpha (a predator of sorts) and if a bunch of reasonable men want to kill him, they’re going to have the whole world to go through first.

All I’m saying, and I can’t believe it’s taking me so long, and why it seems so strange from my angle or something, is that the baboon pyramid of abuse is very much still in effect, and it is still the major cause and effect loop in human society. The punishment/morality function we insist upon is a minor thread, as lovely and as fictional as Wrangham’s control of tyrants by majority action. Understandable sort of error, we’re trying to make the best of a bad situation, trying to salvage some good from the trauma. By the by, the only example that comes to mind is Julius Caesar, maybe the French Revolution – how many alphas have been taken down by their lessers in history? That’s the next alpha’s job, isn’t it?

My idea to call AST a condition, the second in our list, goes like this: AST is the practice of physical and social abuse in order to activate physiological and psychological genetic changes towards aggression. This I believe to be a species-wide phenomenon that supports our lifestyle of group conflict, making us all mean enough to defend the homeland and crazy enough to attack the enemy’s homeland. It is therefore, at present, a Red Queen’s race, with every human group basically as tough and murderous as the next, but one for survival, and therefore an important evolved function which manifests as systems of crime and punishment, rules and penalties – naughty steps, timeout rooms, prisons . . . hey.

It’s good for you – I mean if being tough is good for you, if life is a fight and only the tough survive, then some abuse is good for you, some practice at least, some practical knowledge, knowing how to fight – but it’s not all good, is it? I wouldn’t object to simply knowing how to fight, being able, I sort of hoped my kids would take an interest for their self-defence but they had zero interest, maybe because I tried not to abuse them or even punish them. I think though, antisocialization is an emotional process, a “strong” fellow who can fight and defend is generally one who started by wanting to hurt people, a trait perhaps present in us all by default, but certainly mostly enhanced by pain and abuse. My point here though, is this is what “good” means in contexts of child-rearing or adult attempts at behaviour modification, in conversations about law and order, crime and punishment –  antisocial, wanting to, able to fight. It’s what “spoiled” means – an early childhood free of abuse means that kid will never be the willing, driven, snarling soldier he might have been. Some things you just can’t teach.

This is what it means in reality, I mean, whether we know it or not. We punish someone – apply some legal and scientifically defined abuse as a deterrent – and they get “better.” They don’t always get better in a good way, don’t always stop breaking rules and such – but they get better the other way, desensitized, tough.

OK, I’ve lost track, giving my usual definitions, where were we?

It starts with random violence, maybe random alpha violence, then to deflection, and then to the straight up leveraging of abuse to produce aggressive soldiers, and finally to some upside down situation where we’re still employing that technology, still leveraging abuse to toughen our kids and criminals – but all this pre-existing structure is at odds with our modern, so far only ostensible desire for peace on Earth – so we just say “makes you good” – a word with no content whatsoever, a simple value judgement with no references to the how or why of the situation. Don’t worry, it’ll be “good.” You’re going to “love” this.

Again, it’s all good as long as we need these tough little psychopaths to protect us from all those tough little psychopaths, I guess. We have been stuck in this game forever, and despite that humankind is starting to have higher goals, this layer of self deception, this widespread conflation of what “good” we achieve with our morality of pain and coercion keeps us at the warrior society stage forever.

 

 

Jeff

Aug. 31st., 2019