In Praise of Vermin

             In Praise of Vermin

 

I write this essay in praise of all those critters that survive despite all mankind’s best efforts to exterminate them. I do so out of respect.

So kudos to weeds, pests and plagues! Tough enough to take us on! Here’s to dandelions, crabgrass, poison ivy, poison oak, and kudzu! Here’s to roaches and flies and fleas and mice and rats! Here’s to Asian carp, tiger mussels, raccoons and coyotes!

I think it the height of hypocrisy for us humans to complain of invasive pests. It’s no easy thing to be an invasive pest; you need some advantage. Raccoons have hands, rats have colonies. Invasiveness requires adaptability, as we well know, being invasive pests ourselves.

          I praise vermin and weeds because they prove that life’s vitality exceeds ours; so a natural history beyond ours is guaranteed. I take comfort in this reflection. The raccoon’s hand proves that this planet needs hands, and if we drop the job then there will be another team to pick it up.

          I have a modest proposal; that we find some rapidly-warming steep-sided Arctic island; that we stock it with all of the weeds and pests mentioned above. Then stand back, and watch the ecology of the future evolve.

          I’m sure that experiment is already in process!

 

Family Shames: 4 of 4

          Family Shames 4

A Shameful Tale

 

          If you put together the speculations of the previous three posts, then you get a truly shameful tale of human prehistory, as follows:

          In the old days, Big Men had harems, and all other men were losers. The only hope the loser men had was to slay some Big Man, kill his children, and then rape the women. Of course the women detested this lion-like system, but those compliant to it reproduced more than those resistant to it, which left a genetic trace that our species bears to this very day; as proven by our adulation of killers and tyrants.

          One day a loser man discovered a marvelous magic trick. Simply share spoiled fruit juice with an otherwise resistant woman. She will lose control before he loses potency. This trick spread. Women easily made drunk reproduced more; a genetic trace that our species bears to this very day. The same evolutionary pressures that created violent men and submissive women, then started to create devious men and drunken women. In other words, rape started to shift from force to fraud.

          Eventually someone figured out the brewing of beer. It requires settled colonies and the hard labor of farming; an indignity that men were willing to suffer, for the sake of a magic sex potion.

Big Men dominated these colonies, but soon were outnumbered, and they were forced by political necessity to institute sexual socialism; share and share alike. The losers won… it seems. It’s fraudulent of course; Big Men still gather harems whenever possible.

Civilization is full of fraud, for it is based upon fraud; a genetic trace that we bear to this very day.

Family Shames: 3 of 4

          Family Shames 3

Mr. Charisma

        

The Catholic Church is still reeling from the pedophilia scandals; but the priests are not alone in this. There have been pedophiles amongst teachers, nurses, coaches… anywhere that adults routinely meet with children. Why is this so?

          This tendency reaches its peak in isolated cults, whose leaders show a consistent tendency to monopolize the youngest females. This is clearly reversion to a harem-based reproduction strategy, common in the animal kingdom, and not unknown in biblical history.

           I have elsewhere explained monogamy as sexual socialism; an artificial modification of human sexuality imposed by church and state to minimize the political dangers of masses of unattached men. But that same church, and that same state, had their historical origins in Big Men, who were never monogamists at all.

The Big Men were winners; all other men were losers; but the losers outnumbered the winners, so eventually they won after all. But it’s an artificial victory, and a recent one, barely ten millennia old. Every so often natural man peeks out, and civilization is shocked.

Family Shames: 2 of 4

           Family Shames 2

A Magic Trick

 

          Women are biochemically more vulnerable to alcohol than men are. They are more strongly affected by the same amount, even when measured against body weight; and they take longer to metabolize it away. Why this difference?

          Any frat-boy can tell you why. If you want her to say yes, then get her drunk. If he matches her drink for drink, then she’ll lose control before he loses ability. Alcohol is the original date-rape drug.

          What a simple and effective mating strategy! From the point of view of late Paleolithic man, booze must have seemed a magic potion! Late Paleolithic woman may have had a different opinion; but the ones who said yes tended to have more children than the others; with predictable evolutionary consequences.

          Some anthropologists theorize that agriculture, and with it civilization, was started not exactly for food security, but specifically for the brewing of beer. Farming’s hard work, and a hunter-gatherer can hunt or gather food anywhere; but for a magic sex potion, even a proud hunter will stoop to farming!

          Civilization began with a magic trick; drugged date-rape; a mating strategy still imprinted on our genes.

 

Family Shames: 1 of 4

           Family Shames 1

1.    O so Masculine

2.    A Magic Trick

3.    Mr. Charisma

4.    A Shameful Tale

 

          I write these essays to expose three Family Shames; and the family I refer to is the entire human species. I see, in certain quirks of human behavior, the genetic imprint of successful mating strategies dating back to the Paleolithic; and these strategies are not exactly admirable.

 

1.    O so Masculine

          I see in the news that George Zimmerman, famed for shooting to death a 17-year-old armed with Skittles, is in trouble again, this time for domestic abuse. He had already left his wife; this is another woman; and the question is, why would any woman seek such a man?

          GZ is not alone in enjoying such curious solicitude. Death Row inmates are routinely mailed marriage proposals from women utterly unknown to them. This effect goes beyond the personal to the political; for it is also routine for the worst tyrants to inspire the greatest loyalty. Why?

          I think this resembles a curious custom amongst the lions. A lion pride has one adult male; sooner or later he is challenged by a wandering younger male; if he is defeated then the young male takes his place; and the first thing he does is kill all the lion cubs. What then follows is (to a human) mind-bending; namely, the lionesses make new cubs, and this by mating with the very same male who had just killed their cubs!

          From an evolutionary point of view this makes sense. The new lion is strong, so his cubs will be strong too. I suspect that a similar logic used to apply to Paleolithic humankind. It was a strategy that our distant ancestors borrowed from the lions; truly the King of Beasts, for I have a low opinion of kings, and now of lions, and now of our distant ancestors, who gave us tendencies that we bear to this very day. 

 

 

Who First Ate Cheese?

             Who First Ate Cheese?

 

            Somebody had to be the first to eat cheese. I feel sorry for that someone, but admire that someone’s courage and luck. Surely there had been nothing else to eat, for miles and miles around, and for a long time too. All that was left was this smelly gunk at the bottom of the milk jug. But our heroine ate it, and survived.

             Do you think our heroine’s tribe thought cheese to be health food? Not at first, and rightly so; no doubt her tribefolk had all sorts of bad reactions to cheese, starting with lactose intolerance and going on up to obesity and heart disease. But evolution proceeded, and now lactose intolerance is a rarity, and Frenchmen eat cheese yet stay thin.

             I wonder about the origin of other healthful foods. Yogurt, for instance. Somebody had to be the first to eat that. Again, it must have been hard times. 

             Evolution continues unabated, even within civilization; for now civilization is the environment our genes must adapt to. If milk and cheese are cheap, then lactose intolerance is a genetic defect, and milk becomes health food. If you need readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic merely to survive on these mean streets, then so long dyslexia. If flu, measles and the common cold regularly go pandemic in the cities, then your grandchildren, if any, will have kick-ass immune systems.

             I predict that in 10,000 years, Cheetos will be a health food.

 

 

 

On Orthopsychology and Parapsychology

          On Orthopsychology and Parapsychology

            My cat Charles can appear to teleport. Once I turned around in my chair to see him coming out of the wall. “I saw that!” I said, and he winked at me. I turned my head and there was Katniss sitting there like she had been there all along. I said, “You’re good!”

            Some friends of mine have observed similar phenomena and concluded that cats are psychic; but to me, a “psychic” power is “parapsychological” -  i.e. one where the practitioner outwits the witness. I define ‘orthopsychology’ as psychology where the investigator is smarter than the subject, ‘parapsychology’ as psychology where the subject is smarter than the investigator. Therefore orthopsychology tends to be Classical; its logic is rationalist and its results are reproducible; whereas parapsychology tends to be Romantic; its logic is surreal and its results are... elusive. “Psychic” powers are “mental” powers, where ‘mental’ comes from the Latin “mentir”, to lie.

            So yes, by that definition, cats are definitely psychic. So are Penn and Teller. But though Penn, Teller and cats are parapsychological to us, they are orthopsychological to themselves. Disillusionment is the price of mastering illusion.