Please Adjust the Dial on Your Transcranial Stimulator, 28
A Dark Truth
Mariupol, Bucha, Krematorsk, don’t forget these names. There are many others but these three will suffice for the time being. These are particular names of places from the right here and now, this very moment in history. They’re cities in Ukraine that Putin has attempted to erase from the modern world or at least rearrange them in ways that he hopes will cause us to accept a different “truth.” And … remember those who support, encourage, admire and are more than willing to look away from Putin’s crimes.
‘The election was stolen’ is indeed true if and only if the election was stolen.
Many of us thought all this was a thing of the past; no longer could this happen in Europe. Absurd to believe that major powers would initiate wars of aggression, unreservedly commit war crimes and easily pursue genocide. The world, or at least part of it had evolved, supposedly. But we clearly don’t understand ourselves.
We don’t have to settle for what is given. (Faith Ringgold, American painter)
A Thought Experiment
The year is 2067: It’s the best of times; complete joy, tranquility and life satisfaction has arrived for the whole society. We are all content and there is no more bad stuff. All this with psychotechnology. It’s all just a matter of tweaking your transcranial stimulator. Sure some few people like to call us sheep. Always a few, sad malcontents live among us and that’s all right. “We do exactly what we want—which by no accident harmoniously aligns with what society wants from us.” See, “Let everyone sparkle: psychotechnology in the year 2067”
Our Human Journey
We can follow the threads back in time, even if we have no eye witness accounts or written instruction manuals. The connections to the present have never been truly broken. Evolutionary biologists talk about five big transitions regarding human evolution.
The first occurrence was when hominids walked out of the forest and took their first tentative steps onto the African savanna some 5 million years ago. Around 2.5 million years ago the first stone tool appeared; a million years ago we have evidence of crude blades transformed into large hand axes; 500,000 years ago our relatives began mastering fire and making spears and other tools; fifty thousand years ago Homo sapiens were very much inhabiting the planet and we have clear signs of real, authentic human minds, with paintings on cave walls, carved jewelry and elaborate burials, among other things.
Finally, only some 10,000 years ago the Neolithic Age arrived. Now you can truly see us.
The Gaggle of 150
Primates, of which we are members, are social creatures. For that matter, on a genetic level, we are barely distinguishable from bonobos and chimpanzees. We primates have social intelligence and we enjoy chatting each other up.
Right from the beginning as soon as we started strolling around the savanna, hominids realized they had to stick together. It was dangerous on the open plains. We had to read eyes and body language of saber tooth tigers and other unfriendly creatures. We had to stay alert. We had to cooperate and we had to get smarter if we hoped to survive.
Researchers who study primate brains believe that around 500,000 years ago the human brain grew rapidly and continued for the next 400,000 years. By 100,000 years ago the human brain had reached the size of what it is now. By this time scientists think that humans were congregating in gaggles or groups of around 150.
This number is remarkably consistent, just as the size of our neocortex, the outermost layer of our brain, has pretty much remained the same for the past 100,000 years. The average size of an army company worldwide is 150. Many larger hunter-gatherer clans are about 150 and certain farming communities tend to be around 150. If the community starts to grow beyond 150 then another community is started.
In other words this size seems to be the “comfort” level according to many researchers. It’s the size where we know something about the people around us, the size where friendships can develop and where the history of the group is clear.
While the development of language and its origin is a complicated issue and brings out diverse views among the experts, some scientists believe that when humankind reached the number of 150 around 100,000 years ago, grooming became simply impractical. It takes too long if you’re trying to survive, find food and raise a family.
A number of years ago I worked as an interactor at the Kansas City Zoo. Have you ever watched a group of chimpanzees or great apes grooming one another? It plays an important part in primate life. Yes grooming gets rid of lice and various parsites but it’s also comforting and most important it is used to buy favors.
The downside is that it’s time consuming. By some estimates, taking a group of 150, grooming alone as primates tend to do, could take up to something like 40 percent of total daytime. Was there a better way to bond?
Conceivably the development of language, as some argue, would be an answer. The debate oftentimes centers around just when this might have started. Some have said that the development of language couldn’t have started earlier than 50,000 years ago.
What about human behavior with the opposite sex? Clearly Homo sapiens have had reproductive success. (Some claim that humans have been too successful.) Many of our behaviors were established millions of years ago. Animals in general seem to have a strong liking for symmetry. Asymmetry is frequently associated with poor health or disease.
Women appear to be more attracted to masculine men when ovulating (getting good genes) but during the rest of a woman’s menstrual cycle a woman is more interested in a man who is going to help raise her children.
Men, on the other hand, are consistently most attracted to women who have waist measurements that are between 67 and 80 percent of their hips. In the mind of the male this proportion indicates that the woman is most likely to be healthy and bear children.
This attraction could have developed millions of years ago and regardless of cultural and societal changes today these deep and very old reactions of course play a part in how we think and react in the present.
So why do we continue to do what we do? Our ancestors walked out of the forest to a new world, a world they had to adapt to and did. Today we’re going to need another kind of adaptation if we don’t want to find our lives truly nasty, brutish and short.
The Borderline Psychopath
Of course a key question is how do we change or modify “bad” human behavior, be it on a macro scale or dealing with the predatory office manager. We know a great deal more but the picture is still incomplete. The nature-nurture complexity is one we have to better understand, and it really is not the sole responsibility of the “experts” and most certainly not the exclusive purview of the average politician. We all have to buy into it and understand how we’re all participants.
I’ve always found listening to James Fallon, a neuroscientist and self identified borderline psychopath, an intriguing personality. In this particulat video he goes into his own personal journey of self discovery, which he readily admits come easily to a narcissist like himself. See, The Psychopath Inside.
Have we humans reached the point where the best we can hope for is a pharmacological breakthrough, the red pill or the blue pill or tweaking the transcranial stimulator. Is out future the likes of Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping in China, Victor Orban in Hungary or even the pathetic authoritarianism offered up by the dismal Republican party in the United States. We can’t go back and start all over again.
Virtue Signalling
It’s more complex than you think:
“Throughout human evolution, being able to discriminate true allies from fair-weather friends could make the difference between life and death.”