WHAT THE HELL?

HELLO AGAIN, WORLD!

I don’t know if anyone will be interested in reading this, but it’s welling up in me like the words to a poem, demanding to be spoken. Most of my references are from Wikipedia for ease in both research and for easiest reading. So here they are for what they’re worth, my thoughts on….

BEING HUMAN

The only way I can think to begin is to reference some experiments that shaped my thinking. The first regards the domestication of the silver fox. Here’s a Wiki excerpt:

There are many records of domesticated red foxes and others, but rarely of sustained domestication. A recent and notable case is the Russian silver fox, a domesticated silver fox by the Siberian Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk,[18] since it resulted in visible and behavioral changes, and is a case study of an animal population modeling according to human domestication needs. The current group of domesticated silver foxes are the result of nearly fifty years of experiments in the Soviet Union and Russia to domesticate the silver morph of the red fox. Notably, the new foxes became more tame, allowing themselves to be petted, whimpering to get attention and sniffing and licking their caretakers.[19] They also became more dog-like as well: they lost their distinctive musky "fox smell", became more friendly with humans, put their ears down (like dogs), wagged their tails when happy and began to vocalize and bark like domesticated dogs. They also began to exhibit other traits seen in some dog breeds, such as color pattern, curled tails, floppy ears, and shorter legs and tails. They are also more likely to have piebald coats, and will almost always have a white spot on the chest or face. The breeding project was set up by the Soviet scientist Dmitri K. Belyaev.

The purpose of the experiment was to see if wild dogs became domesticated ones through selective breeding by humans. Here’s what happened:

Belyaev believed that the key factor selected for in the domestication of dogs was not size or reproduction, but behavior; specifically, tameability. Since behavior is rooted in biology, selecting for tameness and against aggression, means selecting for physiological changes in the systems that govern the body's hormones and neurochemicals. Belyaev decided to test his theory by domesticating foxes; in particular, the silver fox, a dark color form of the red fox. He placed a population of them under strong selection pressure for inherent tameness.

As Lyudmilla Trut says in her 1999 American Scientist article, The least domesticated foxes, those that flee from experimenters or bite when stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. Foxes in Class II let themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the "domesticated elite," are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35 percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally selected population.

What this outcome showed was that through selective breeding over a mere 50 years or ten generations, the traits selected for changed the breed. Not only personalities changed, but also coloring, demeanor, and communication styles. It’s unlikely that these changes can be reversed.

Just file that.

The second experiment worth noting involves some dancing pigeons.

The Skinner box is a device that was first developed by B. F. Skinner in his work on operant conditioning. A subject was placed in the box, and the mechanism gave small amounts of food each time the subject performed a particular action, such as depressing a lever or pecking a disk. With the operant conditioning chamber attached to a recording device, Skinner was able to discover schedules of reinforcement. These patterns are the basis for organismic interactions with the environment and are explored extensively in Schedules of Reinforcement and elsewhere.

But here’s where it got really, really interesting:

Skinner's research discovered many fascinating examples of animal behavior. One of the most interesting, perhaps, was Skinner's work on superstition. Instead of giving a reward for a specific action and training a specific behavior, Skinner would take a hungry pigeon and place it in a box that would release a food pellet at random. The pigeons developed all kinds of complex behavioral responses such as bowing, scraping, dancing, and neck turns.

What happened was the pigeon would receive the food pellet while it happened to be performing some action, and rather than attributing the food pellet reward to randomness, it would assume that the appearance of the food pellet had something to do with its behavior. So it started doing whatever that action was, over and over again, and sure enough, it was eventually rewarded with a food pellet again. Since the pigeon is increasing the amount of time spent performing a particular action, it is also increasing the number of times it is "rewarded" for that action, even though the reward is random.
One can’t help but wonder how pigeons have so quidkly – within one lifetime - invented a religion of dance. I don’t mean to invalidate actual religious/spiritual experiences. I think it occasionally happens that a particular person has a great insight of spiritual significance and becomes enlightened. But if this moment of clarity occurred while that person was on a hilltop, everyone rushes to the hilltop hoping for the same insight, and often claim that they get it. And it may be true that they gain some insight. However, repeating the behavior does not guaranty the same result; the two are unrelated. Build a giant church on the hilltop and shame those who don’t believe in the hilltop and you have just unintentionally invented an organized religion. Anyone who disagrees that the hilltop confers enlightenment is ostracized from the community and denigrated with such phrases as “lack of faith” or “blindness to the truth.” But the truth actually has no part in their religion, and faith gains nothing but a good feeling of community, acceptance and agreement.

Our minds are hard-wired to see patterns. They are hard-wired to see things in terms of cause and effect even when the outcome is completely unrelated to previous actions. Since one can’t predict randomness, and there’s nothing about it that’s understandable, we learn to dance like pigeons in a random reward-trial. The good news is that what seems random is actually the outcome, not of what dance we were doing at the time, but of causes we can’t readily see or understand. Humans survive by solving problems, and that’s an excellent strategy. Right up until there’s a flood (for example) and we lose loved ones and/or our possessions. Then it seems to our problem-solving minds that there must be a way to prevent such things, but there isn’t. So we move on to thinking that we must have done something wrong, When no physical mistake is found, we reach further afield and light on the idea that we have thought or believed or behaved wrongly. Organized religion bolsters this view by the expedient logic of telling us that if we had faith we could do anything, and if we can’t fix this it’s because our faith is lacking. So the problem-solving, outcome-oriented human mind, while it is not happy, is satisfied that the solution has been found.


Third, an experiment unofficially called “Monkey Money.” There isn’t a good Wiki reference for this experiment, so allow me to summarize. If you’re interested in the details, see the “References” section below.


Cognitive psychologist Laurie Santos taught a group of primates to use money for food. Exchange rates were established, and then some pretty sophisticated scenarios were set up where the primates were allowed – even encouraged – to take financial risks in the hope of financial gain. The amazing outcome was that the primates very quickly displayed exactly the same attitudes and actions that humans demonstrate in our own financial decision-making. No significant difference.


So while this is not absolute proof, the implication is clear; humans are not that special. Other animals, which we consider lower life forms, share our innate traits. What that says about being human is that our “programming” (our ideas and even our ideals) are neither entirely unique nor entirely random, nor based solely on our experiences. WE ARE JUST ONE OF THE ANIMALS ON THIS PLANET. Does that mean you are not special? Not at all! Just that some of the unique bundle which makes up “you” is hard-wired. Of course you still determine your own path, your own choices, your own value. What it DOES mean is that if we are going to claim we are intelligent, we must accept the evidence that much of our thinking began as evolutionary advantages shared by other earth-beings, and that some of that thinking needs to be changed. We need to recognize what paradigms are no longer valid.


BETTER THAN HUMAN

I always find it a bit annoying when humans are surprised by the love, loyalty, and compassion displayed by animals. I’ve had at least one cat almost continually for the last fifty years. When still a child, I realized they are capable of love, loyalty, and every kind of good behavior including compassion. That’s not to say that animals aren’t dangerous; they very much are! But they are just as capable of caring, making sacrifices, and loving even across species barriers as humans are. Eventually I believe humans will be able to accept this, and as a result, treat animals at least as well as we treat each other. However, this will no doubt take some time, as social adjustments seem to take many generations to “take.”


This can easily be seen in the social issues we still – despite our claim to be rational – are struggling to deal with. Racism, for example, is a natural enough attitude when the threat of strangers invading one’s territory and gene pool is acute and threatens our genetic success. But we are far beyond the point where the success of our species depends on this. Racial purity is actually the opposite of success, since diversity provides a much greater chance of survival.


Homosexuality, for another example, is not unique to humans. Even the most cursory study of animal mating habits shows that it is ubiquitous in nature. Homosexuality and/or gender ambiguity is a fact of life among all animals, and there’s no reason humans should be immune, or why it should be considered “unnatural.” When breeding populations were dismayingly small, this might have seemed threatening. But once again, this is no longer a threat to the survival of the human species. In a genetic bottleneck – which humans have faced more than once – it was an issue. For us? No.


Using our much-vaunted intelligence, it is time to rethink many attitudes and behaviors which originally had an evolutionary advantage, but NO LONGER DO.


GOOD GUYS / BAD GUYS


Opponents of selective breeding seem to forget that humans have been selectively breeding themselves since before we became homo sapiens sapiens. We breed ourselves selectively by choosing the most attractive (that is to say, usually the fittest) mates we can find. This has been going on for far more than ten generations. Like the silver foxes above, our behavior and appearance have been shaped by this – surely – completely “natural” selection process.


My point is that if we are taller, more consistently bipedal, stronger and smarter or more beautiful, it isn’t because we were just uniquely made that way, but because over thousands of generations we chose to become that way. In the silver fox experiment one should note that this selective breeding only succeeded in its goal about eighty percent of the time. Knowing this to be the case, perhaps we should evince slightly less surprise when a certain percentage of our population doesn’t exhibit the desired traits or behaviors. Altruism doesn’t necessarily breed true.


People will tell you that community-beneficial traits like altruism and other good behaviors have evolved to support our species rather than the individual. There are all sorts of explanations for why families or herds protect one another, for instance, sometimes at the cost of their own evolutionary success. The same strategy can be observed in pack animals like prairie dogs and wolves. It’s not my intention to argue causes, but rather to simply note that group-benefitting behaviors exist, that this is a fact of nature just as much as economic systems, superstition and selective breeding are. Homophobia and racism are perfectly natural outcomes of our evolution.


So who are the “good guys”? The good guys are the ones who observe the facts, evaluate their applicability to circumstances and aim for better action and better understanding. They are the ones who consider our problems, rethink their position, and modify their thinking to embrace the facts – the reality.


ADOLESCENTS


It’s well known that the most dangerous place to be when it comes to bears is between a mother and her cubs. At any perceived threat to her offspring the mother bear will attack and kill without hesitation. And yet when her cubs reach adolescence, the same protective mother bear drives her cubs up a tree and forces them to stay there. When she’s sure they won’t try to come down, she leaves what has been her territory, leaving it to the cubs and leaving them on their own. When they finally grow tired and/or hungry enough to come down, their mother is gone forever and their adulthood has begun.


When male lions (similarly to wolves and other pack animals) reach adolescence they are driven out of the pride and wander alone until they find another pride and are either stronger or more desperate than the alpha lion in that group and attempt to take the alpha lion’s place. If they’re successful, they have a new home and family. If not, they continue to wander on until they eventually succeed or die.


Even among domesticated cats where pride- or pack-based behavior doesn’t apply, once her kittens are weaned the mother drives them out of her territory. Should they return, she will attack them exactly as she would any invading stranger.


This same type of scenario plays out across all species and has always done so. It’s a successful survival strategy. Yet every single generation of humans without fail has the same reaction to the adolescence of the following generation; they wonder where they have gone wrong or been bad parents. They wonder what is wrong with their teenagers. The teens just want to get out from under their parents’ control, and by the time they leave home the parents are glad to see the back of them. But – there’s actually nothing puzzling in either case. Whether you are the parent or the adolescent, the bonds of childhood have to be broken, new territories staked out, mating strategies tested, battles for dominance fought, and ultimately, the separation will occur. It shouldn’t be surprising that it’s a painful process. So why do we fight the process, blame ourselves and our children, and suffer so much drama as a result of a perfectly natural process?


Of course it’s necessary for every young adult to challenge the very things parents have tried to procure for them (financial security, education, marriage). They are simply establishing themselves beyond the security blanket. The drive is as predictable as it is unavoidable. There’s no need for alarm on either side; just take the long view; eventually these new strategies being tested will either succeed or fail. Either way, the most important factor in our success is that we support one another through the process, share compassionately, and come out the other side with a sense that whatever happens we will not abandon one another. A child will perfectly naturally question everything they’ve been taught. It doesn’t mean the adults in their lives have done anything wrong, nor, in the end, will children on this migration ultimately think the older generation are idiots; they will come to respect them given time and experience. In the long run, it is not the End Of The World.



CONCLUSION


The point of bringing up the subject of adolescence is this; there is very little difference between humans and animals. The sooner one becomes at peace with that, with our natures – with nature itself, the sooner we can go about the business of evolving our culture and working with nature instead of fighting it. Since you can’t change nature there is no sense in that. Give even a little thought to the issue of problem teenagers and guilt-ridden adults and you’ll see that we’ve been handling the breaking of our childhood pair-bonds in the worst possible way.


Again, we must, if we insist on claiming we are intelligent, look at the facts. It makes no sense to blame anyone (even yourself) for things which have always happened. If we are so smart, why are we failing to learn from the facts, even when they are endlessly repeated right in front of us? People from different places or with different skin color or with gender-related differences, members of other generations or even members of different species are exactly the same as we are on the most basic level. Look at the evidence for yourself.


In summary, I urge humans to think, to consider some uncomfortable truths, to draw new conclusions and shift perspectives accordingly. Like all earth animals, we have evolved selectively, and certain traits are now inherent in our makeup. But that doesn’t make them permanent. The drive to reproduce was a brilliant survival strategy, but it no longer serves us best. Having a multitude of children may make one feel genetically secure, but it is no longer necessary or even desirable for survival. The same applies to racism, homophobia, religion. The need for economic and community/spiritual security, for good mating rights, for genetic immortality, are universal desires. Just recognize the systems, acknowledge their value, and consider what we can realistically do within them. These are my aims, this is my truth. Thank you for reading this, because just hearing some new ideas is good for your thinking and for humanity; change comes slowly, but inexorably. It allows our future evolution to be wiser. Namaste.



REFERENCES:

Domestication of the silver fox; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_K._Belyaev

Dancing Pigeons; http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Skinner_box

Monkey Money; http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos and http://www.marketplace.org/topics/your-money/monkeys-love-discounts-too